Emergency care assistant

Emergency Care Assistants, or ECAs, are a new role of frontline staff on NHS emergency ambulances within the United Kingdom, introduced as part of modernisation of the NHS ambulance services to cut costs. Having only been created in 2006, the role is evolving rapidly, and has not been standardised over the country, but always consists of assisting qualified paramedics and emergency medical technicians with their duties by driving under blue light conditions, assisting with lifting and handling of patients, administering oxygen under the direction of the qualified member of staff as well as carrying out basic observations of the patient's vital signs and reporting back to the clinician.

ECAs at present have no clinical qualifications, but the pathway of progression to technician or paramedic status is being widely discussed at present and has become a hot topic within many ambulance trusts.

Initially the role of ECA was and to some extent continues to be unwelcome by a few higher grade staff, who believedthat ECA's would be unqualified and that this would lead to fatigue, but as initial ECA training is intensive and around9 weeks long ECA's should be adequately qualified to carry out their role as an assistant to a Paramedic or a Technician,in-fact if deployed correctly an experienced ECA should significantly lessen a clinicians work load. [ [http://www.learndirect-advice.co.uk/helpwithyourcareer/jobprofiles/profiles/profile1478/] ] .To put this into perspective initial Technician training is between 9 and 14 weeks. [ [http://www.scottishambulance.com/careers/traintechnician.asp] ] . [ [http://www.learndirect-advice.co.uk/helpwithyourcareer/jobprofiles/profiles/profile283/] ] .The rumour that an ECA would be driving for an entire 12 hour shift was another unfounded rummor because the driving hastraditionally always been split between the two crew members as required and there is no reason for this practice to change.

ECAs are now slowly becoming more accepted into the ambulance service and time will tell whether this new role is up to the rigors of a modern Emergency Ambulance Service.