We would like to thank Brooks Walsh for his comments and agree that
it is important to understand the rich and mostly ignored perspectives of
prehospital clinicians and their patients.
Whilst it is true that patients were drawing upon a singular concrete
experience they usually reported this in the context of their broader
experiences and expectations of interactions with health services.
Similarly, although clinicians were drawing upon a range of experiences
during the interview process, they often related this to individual
experiences of care. The difference in patient and clinicians experience
is inevitable, i.e. patients (usually) access prehospital services on rare
occasions whereas for prehospital clinicians this is the 'bread-and-
butter' of their work.
We wanted to provide detailed descriptions of their personalised
individual recollections and views, but we also wanted to draw on
clinicians' wider experiences of care which they had provided to many
patients over a period of time.
The quotation on page 2 of the article is indicative that
practitioners reflected on actual past experience rather than simply
offering generalised beliefs or opinions:
If you get somebody who's had like, like a massive stroke I
think the care, obviously you're giving them the oxygen and
things like that and sometimes I think my lack of care would
have been, really you're rushing so much, you don't have the
time, you're under pressure to deliver so to speak so you do
sometimes forget about the other person or forget about the
patient who can still hear you and understand even though they
might not be able to communicate and sometimes you don't
really talk enough to the patient you don't tell them what
you're going to do. You just literally pick them up, grab them,
put them in the chair, oxygen, done, gone. (C1) 1
Fiona Togher, Zowie Davy, A Niroshan Siriwardena
References
1. Togher FJ, Davy Z, Siriwardena AN. Patients' and ambulance
service clinicians' experiences of prehospital care for acute myocardial
infarction and stroke: a qualitative study. Emerg Med J 2012.
Conflict of Interest:
None declared
We would like to thank Brooks Walsh for his comments and agree that it is important to understand the rich and mostly ignored perspectives of prehospital clinicians and their patients.
Whilst it is true that patients were drawing upon a singular concrete experience they usually reported this in the context of their broader experiences and expectations of interactions with health services. Similarly, although clinicians were drawing upon a range of experiences during the interview process, they often related this to individual experiences of care. The difference in patient and clinicians experience is inevitable, i.e. patients (usually) access prehospital services on rare occasions whereas for prehospital clinicians this is the 'bread-and- butter' of their work.
We wanted to provide detailed descriptions of their personalised individual recollections and views, but we also wanted to draw on clinicians' wider experiences of care which they had provided to many patients over a period of time.
The quotation on page 2 of the article is indicative that practitioners reflected on actual past experience rather than simply offering generalised beliefs or opinions:
If you get somebody who's had like, like a massive stroke I
think the care, obviously you're giving them the oxygen and
things like that and sometimes I think my lack of care would
have been, really you're rushing so much, you don't have the
time, you're under pressure to deliver so to speak so you do
sometimes forget about the other person or forget about the
patient who can still hear you and understand even though they
might not be able to communicate and sometimes you don't
really talk enough to the patient you don't tell them what
you're going to do. You just literally pick them up, grab them,
put them in the chair, oxygen, done, gone. (C1) 1
Fiona Togher, Zowie Davy, A Niroshan Siriwardena
References
1. Togher FJ, Davy Z, Siriwardena AN. Patients' and ambulance service clinicians' experiences of prehospital care for acute myocardial infarction and stroke: a qualitative study. Emerg Med J 2012.
Conflict of Interest:
None declared