Physician-paramedic teams can save lives: new study

January 16, 2025

In much of B.C. and Canada, pre-hospital care is delivered solely by teams of paramedics. However, a new UBC study suggests that physicians and paramedics working alongside each other on specialized teams could greatly improve patient outcomes, especially in rural and remote areas.

The analysis of jurisdictions that use interprofessional physician-paramedic teams shows they can increase patient survival rates by 49 per cent and decrease mortality risk by 20 per cent.

“Pre-hospital care is especially important to rural, remote and First Nations communities. Travel times to remote communities, combined with variable weather, mean that it can take hours or days to get a patient to hospital,” said senior author Dr. Mike Christian, a clinical professor of critical care medicine at UBC and consultant to the Rural Coordination Centre of BC on transportation issues.

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