Bristol CEMS
On Monday 25th April Bristol Royal Infirmary ED, in collaboration with SWAST, commenced a 3 month Community Emergency Medicine Trial.
The trial is exploring advanced decision making, diagnostics, treatments, pathways and clinic access that are currently only available through the Emergency Department. It looks to see if the service can add to the patient treatment episode in the prehospital environment. In some cases this may change the need for attendance of the Emergency Department.
A senior doctor from the Emergency Department will be paired with a SWAST ambulance resource between 0800-1600 Monday to Friday.
The multidisciplinary combination will allow the team to explore care that is tailored to the individual patient, include the ability to make decisions that do not traditionally lie within specific pathways, but where both the patient and team believe it affords an even better alternative.
Only a week in the ED clinicians have learnt a huge amount from the SWAST team and look forward to building on this in the next few months.
We have been very much supported by inpatient specialties in the pilots setup and are excited about the opportunity the trial brings in joining up excellent care for our community. We will also be using learning from this trial to help further develop pathways and services to further streamline care for prehospital patients.
Simon Laing, Becky Thorpe, Harvey Pynn & Nicky Moore
(on behalf of the Community Emergency Medicine team)
