What to prepare to be an ambulance nurse? Scoping review of ambulance nurse competencies

Abstract

Delays in handling emergency management at the prehospital scene are still a challenge for prehospital officers in Indonesia. There needs to be a standard of ambulance nurse competence to improve the quality of prehospital nursing care and increase the patient's survival rate. The purpose of this study was to identify an ambulance nurse's competence in handling prehospital emergency cases. The preparation of this scoping review is based on 4 databases, namely ProQuest, EBSCO, Science Direct, and Pubmed. The strategy for determining article search keywords is carried out by the PICOS method. From the database search result, 161 articles were obtained (ProQuest n=31, EBSCO n=69, PubMed n=72, and Science Direct n=77). The screening process of the search result used the PRISMA method by removing duplicate articles and selecting the articles that do not match the purpose. After the screening process, there were 13 articles that discuss an ambulance nurse's competence. There were 6 ambulance nurse competence areas: procedural skill, assessment of the situation, professional knowledge, communication, resource utilization, and decision-making. This study showed the need for specific validation that discusses an ambulance nurse's competence in handling emergency cases at the prehospital scene.