IRCP Vision and Mission Statements
The International Roundtable on Community Paramedicine and Rural Health Care Delivery is an organization of delegates from various countries and regions dedicated to exploring the promotion and better delivery of health care through the utilization of “traditional” and “non-traditional” models of care.
Definitions
Urban centres include cities, towns or larger villages where population density is significant enough to sustain high performance systems of health care delivery.
Rural centres include smaller villages, settlements and less densely populated regions where resources are limited, and provision of care is challenged by longer response times, limited shared resources, low population density, and greater distances between centres.
Remote areas may consist of largely unpopulated areas spanning significant geographic areas and where provision of services is either non-existent or very limited.
Community Paramedicine is a model of care whereby paramedics apply their training and skills in “non-traditional” community-based environments (outside the usual emergency response/transport model). The community paramedic may practice within an “expanded scope” (applying specialized skills/protocols beyond that which he/she was originally trained for), or “expanded role” (working in non-traditional roles using existing skills).
Mission Statement
The IRCP promotes the international exchange of information and experience related to the provision of flexible and reliable health care services to residents of rural and remote areas using novel health care delivery models and to be a resource to public policy makers, systems managers, and others. While its focus is on rural and remote medicine, the lessons learned may prove beneficial to the better provision of urban health care.
Vision Statement
The IRCP facilitates discussions, meetings and research focused on designing systems which will ensure patients’ needs continue to be met in environments and circumstances where health services are less available and provision of care is increasingly challenging. Integral to this vision is the provision of services by paramedics with “expanded scope” and “expanded role”. These “Second Generation” Paramedics (G2P) will provide services through unique models of delivery and enhanced protocols through an integrated collaborative network with other health care providers.
Goals
The goals of IRCP are to:
1. Catalog, create and share a Community Paramedicine Curriculum, portions of which can be matched to local needs, that can be delivered in a multi-modal internationally standardized way;
2. Build an internationally standardized data set, data collection method, and route of access for researchers;
3. Conduct annual international “Sharing Solutions” seminars on experiences and research conducted in this field over the last year; and,
4. Seek sponsorship to sustain goals and mission of IRCP.
Objectives
The objectives of the IRCP are to:
1. Catalog experiments/pilot programs/trials and existing population-based programs
2. Catalog developed training resources
3. Catalog existing research of innovative population-based resources
4. Catalog local circumstances that led to change
5. Identify areas of core competence
6. Develop community needs analysis tools for the planning for the future health needs of their communities
7. Discover the evolution of other allied health professions and apply successful practices
8. Develop a template for change and facilitation of the introduction of new models of care
9. Deliver “how to” seminars and be a source of data, ideas, and other information for interested health care agencies faced with the need to change manage their system in non-traditional ways.