Knowledge Centre PreHospen 11 years

With research and development centre of prehospital emergency care as its mission, PreHospen was founded 11 years ago and is placed at the University of Borås, School of Health Sciences.

Today, PreHospen is nationally as well as internationally well established with researchers and doctoral students who work to develop and improve ambulance care, prehospital emergency care and care at emergency medical contact points (assessments and priorities in the ambulance services). PreHospen views caring science and medical science as two supplemental yet autonomous sciences which in cooperation enrich research at the benefit of patients and relatives. The PreHospen research is part of the research programme at the School of Health Sciences, Integrated Care Improvement – Targeted Care from the Patient’s Perspective.

PreHospen believes in innovative cooperation between science and the professions as the starting-point for creative meetings between academics and caregivers. Here, concrete care issues can turn into projects. In turn, large-scaled project can result in research projects. In this way, research is intertwined with the professions with a clear connection between the needs of patients and caregivers in a prehospital context.

Current research at PreHospen takes its point of departure in the perspectives of patients, relatives and caregivers. Strategic research is conducted in assessment and decision support in prehospital emergency care, in documentation and in the caregivers’ work environment. Other important fields of research are specialised on how structural changes in care presupposes cooperation between ambulance care, primary care and municipal care. Finally, research is conducted on ethical dilemmas, assessments and priorities.

The prehospital care sector is also further developed by the PreHospen strategy to stimulate nurses with a master degree to combine research with their practical care work. Specialist master students and education in tutoring are other important steps on the way to meet the patients’ needs to good care based on his/her lifeworld.