Point of Care Testing by Paramedics (POCTPara)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Point of Care Testing (POCT) for Advanced Practitioners (Paramedics) in urgent and emergency care: a single site feasibility study.
IRAS ID
289975
Contact name
Andrew Hodge
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Bradford
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 5 months, 30 days
Research summary
Point of care testing (POCT) is described as a laboratory blood test conducted near the patient with a rapid result obtained through a portable analysing device. The advantage of using POCT testing is that blood tests that used to take several hours to wait for the results can be obtained within a few minutes while being with the patient.
Over the past 10 years, POCT devices have been increasingly used outside of hospital by community healthcare services. Paramedics may be able to use these devices to make better decisions for their patients, including making more informed decisions about their care which may involve referring the patient to an appropriate specialist centre or deciding whether a patient can be more safely managed in the community.
Most studies have looked at the use of POCT devices for very sick patients, with little research in the paramedic urgent and emergency care environment. However, before we decide if these devices may be useful for paramedic decision making, we want to evaluate if paramedics can use the devices in the mobile pre-hospital environment and interpret the test results.
This feasibility study aims to work out if it is possible to train 7 senior paramedics (advanced practitioners) to use POCT devices and record how easy it is use them, what kind of patients they could use them for, the number of times they fail to get a result and the reasons why. This will help us to understand if a larger study could be developed to evaluate POCT device use by paramedics in terms of safety in decision making with patients calling 999 with less acute problems.
REC name
North East - Newcastle & North Tyneside 2 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
22/NE/0135
Date of REC Opinion
10 Oct 2022
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion