Health inequalities in the prehospital critical care response to OHCA
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Health inequalities in the prehospital critical care response to out-of-hospital cardiac arrest
IRAS ID
335125
Contact name
Joyce Yeung
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Warwick
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 7 months, 31 days
Research summary
BACKGROUND: Cardiac arrest is a medical emergency when a person’s heart stops beating. . Each year, NHS ambulance services treat around 32,000 people who have a cardiac arrest and sadly less than one in ten survive to leave hospital. The government aims to save an extra 1000 people’s lives per year from cardiac arrest.
Getting emergency treatment quickly is key to survival. Unfortunately, people in deprived areas and areas with more non-white ethnicity residents are less likely to receive chest compressions from bystanders and are less likely to have a defibrillator located nearby.
The NHS response involves sending paramedic ambulances to provide emergency treatment. In addition, ambulance services may send prehospital critical care teams with advanced skills to treat and then stabilise the patient.
AIM: This project aims to look for health inequalities in the prehospital critical care response to cardiac arrest and see how the response could be improved.
DESIGN: The project involves two pieces of work.
First, the research will compare the cardiac arrest patients that get prehospital critical care with those that don’t. This will see if ethnicity and deprivation status affect what care they receive.
Second, the research will look at where critical care team bases are and how long it takes them to get to different neighbourhoods. The response time will be compared to the neighbourhood characteristics, for example social deprivation and ethnicity. Also, it will see if this matches the neighbourhood cardiac arrest statistics, including the number of cardiac arrests and whether they receive community first aid.
We will involve those who run the ambulance service throughout the project. This means any changes to improve patient care can be done quickly. Findings will be presented in talks and reports. Patient/public groups have helped develop this project.REC name
North West - Greater Manchester East Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
23/NW/0378
Date of REC Opinion
31 Jan 2024
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion