SCAS (South Central Ambulance Service) Frontline Perspectives

Geographically, SCAS covers Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, covered by the TVS Care Record, and Hampshire.

SCAS consists of different departments, essentially the Patient Transport Services that transport people to and from appointments in a planned way, the 111 service and the 999 service.

Steph Colborne asked Joe, why are Shared Care Records so important for the Ambulance Service and why it is it that emergency and pre-hospital settings are different to planned care when it comes to Shared Care Records and access?

The difference it’s made is humongous, because it’s changed the way we interact with our patients. Prior to Shared Care Records we have had to go with …the patient is the historian, so at 2am with your 94-year-old patient you start to hear about the bunion in 1947 and you’re trying to bring them up to speed as to why you are here today. This puts a lot of pressure on the patient to tell their story, this takes time and we have to try and work out what we have and carry out that initial assessment. With access to the Shared Care Record we can say … I can see you have this diagnosis, I see you have these allergies recorded, is that true, is that valid? This means we can do a sense check, and the patient can step back a little bit. An emergency is frightening for the patient, it wasn’t planned, they weren’t expecting this today. Being able to access the Shared Care Record, I’ve had more smiles and a particularly large bear hug from a 6’7” paramedic. People are just genuinely happy that it’s made their clinical practice that much easier, in my career it’s had a massive impact really speedily.

Joe's favourite stories

One of my colleagues went out to a gentleman who was experiencing chest plain, when we (SCAS) arrived, the gentleman was so inconsolable it was difficult for him to articulate himself. We carried out an ECG and what we were able to see from the Shared Care Record was that he’d had previous presentations to ED with similar symptoms. My colleague was able to say I can see from the record that you’ve had a couple of these before, you did go to ED, is this what it felt like before? And he was able to see other ECG recordings which enables us to see if there are any changes.

My personal favourite was a lady in her 80s who had fallen in her home. We couldn’t work out what had happened, her husband was profoundly hard of hearing, so it was difficult to get any information from him. It was about 11.30pm and I was by myself doing an initial assessment to try and get her up. I asked about her past medical history, and we were back to the bunion in 1947. I thought I’ll just check the Shared Care Record before I get  the lifting cushion out of my boot. In the Shared Care Record, I can see a discharge about 10 days to 2 weeks previously from Orthopaedics for a hip replacement. When I asked whether she just had a hip replacement she said, “yes, I forgot to tell you about that” which then changed the clinical plan. I arranged for back up crew to attend. That patient ended up being conveyed because we needed more imaging. That situation could have been so different, I had followed the process, the patient had just neglected to inform me of something important.

Steph Colborne explained that Joe had arranged for the button into the Shared Care Record (from the Ambulance system) to go ‘green’ when there is data in the Shared Care Record available for that patient.

Joe explained

There is a big different between emergency and pre-hospital EPRs and Hospital EPR systems in that theirs isn’t MPI based, it’s incident based. One incident can be for one patient or a coach load of patients, so the information contained isn’t in super patient context, that’s why the Shared Care Record is so helpful.

Respect Care Plan

When Joe was interviewed in October 2025, one of the things he said would improve the service even better would be to have access to ReSPECT Care Plans in the Shared Care Record.  Since then, Thames Valley ICB have started to roll out the electronic ReSPECT Care Plan which is embedded in the TVS Shared Care Record. The ReSPECT Care Plan has been developed by Graphnet in collaboration with the Resus Council. This is a Resus Council accredited form in the Shared Care Record.