PreHospen – Centre for Prehospital Research

– Collaboration for better pre-hospital emergency care

PreHospen – Centre for Prehospital Research is as of 2015 one of six research centres at the University of Borås. Here, interdisciplinary research is conducted that integrates with caring sciences, medicine, medical technology, and technology related to dispatch centres, ambulance emergency care, emergency rooms, and primary and regional healthcare. The goal is to increase knowledge development within the prehospital area so that the early care of ill, injured, and suffering people can be improved. The research should ultimately confer benefits for the patient, relatives, caregivers, the community, and healthcare settings. This means that successful research develops healthcare, thus resulting in a benefit to the economics of healthcare.

Through innovative collaborations between science and professions creative intersections of academics and carers are promoted. Specific care issues turn into projects. Large projects can, in turn, develop into research projects. In this way, the research is closely tied to the healthcare professions, with a clear connection to patients’ and their relatives’ needs in the prehospital context.

Research at PreHospen is conducted from patients’, relatives’, and carers’ perspectives. Patient safety and ambulance registries are current research areas. Further, over many years, strategic research in the areas of assessment and decision support for pre-hospital emergency care, documentation, and carers’ working environments have been conducted. Other important areas focus on how structural changes in healthcare requires cooperation between emergency medical services, primary care, and public healthcare. Finally, research is conducted around ethical issues, assessments, and prioritisation.

The field of prehospital care is also developed through PreHospen’s strategy of including Master’s programme students in ongoing research projects and encouraging nurses specialising in ambulance care to combine research with clinical practice.