Quality Assurance Program
The Bruce County EMS Quality Assurance program is responsible for ensuring that the level of emergency medical patient care and transportation provided by paramedics is done at a reliable and standard level. By constantly evaluating patient management and documentation, our Quality Assurance program is able to recognize strengths and weaknesses in the system and respond as necessary. The Quality Assurance program helps establish a standard of care and identifies needs for training programs and education to ensure proper and professional care is provided. The program’s ability to identify areas where paramedics are high performing allows for acknowledgment and positive feedback.
The Quality Assurance program consists of many different facets, some of which include direct paramedic service observation, documentation review, intermittent skills evaluations and a comprehensive orientation process upon hiring. Although we typically concentrate on current practice, we evaluate our past and look to the future. We not only monitor our own trends such as response times and patient care but we also look outside and benchmark our practice against others in the field.
Bruce County EMS Superintendents are also responsible for investigating and reporting on any internal or external concerns brought forward.
An effective Quality Assurance program provides the public with confidence that their emergency medical service is serving them with an established standard of care.
A Quality Assurance program involves a team of dedicated professionals who ensure that medical care provided in the field by pre-hospital personnel is:
- Safe
- Compassionate
- Timely
- Consistent
- Appropriate
- Cost-effective
- Positively influences patient outcome
The Bruce County EMS Quality Assurance Program encompasses the following:
- Develop and implement paramedic performance audits.
- Researches and develops strategies for improved operations.
- Verifies Ambulance Call Reports for completion and accuracy and provides reports to staff.
- Identification of deficiencies through continuous evaluations.
- Reviews and analyzes legislation, regulations, guidelines and best practices pertaining to EMS operations.
- Coordinates revisions or changes to policy and procedures in response to changes in regulations.
- Ensure patient care is delivered following the standards required by the Ministry of Health in the Basic Life Support Patient Care Standards.
- Develop ‘action plans’ to ensure compliance.
Staff Development
The goal of EMS staff development is to enhance and further the knowledge and skill base of our Paramedics while also ensuring a familiarity with existing standards.
Given the extraordinary large geographic area of the county we cover, Bruce County EMS continues in its efforts to make use of the benefits of technology to bring learning solutions to staff in the field. Using the computer workstations and Internet access available in all of our bases, we have been able to efficiently deliver educational material to staff. This allows for a rapid adaptation to evolving patient care issues to the benefit of those we serve.
Staff development also includes a student placement component. The Quality Assurance Manager coordinates the placement of both secondary school co-op students as well as college Paramedic students with practicing Paramedics. College Paramedic students complete their program required field placement hours and gain valuable experience in providing patient care under the direct supervision of Paramedics while being exposed to the operations of Bruce County EMS and seeing what our service has to offer.
Summary
EMS Components and Quality Assurance Activities:
- Medical Direction
- Protocols; continuous re-evaluation
- Training
- Communications and dispatch
- Pre-hospital transport
- Inter-facility transport
- Receiving facilities
- Public information and education
- Audits and quality assurance
- Disaster planning
- Mutual aid and tiered response
Mission Statement
We, the employees of Bruce County Emergency Medical Services are committed to the delivery of compassionate pre-hospital care to the communities we serve through the pursuit of excellence, effective leadership and positive relationships. We will be attentive to our client’s needs and will strive to provide continual improvement and effective use of our resources.
For more information please contact
Kent Padfield
Deputy Chief - Quality Assurance
County of Bruce Emergency Medical Services
30 Park St.
Walkerton, Ontario
N0G 2V0
kpadfield@brucecounty.on.ca
