Paramedic - Medicolegal Authority

Medicolegal Authority

The medicolegal framework for paramedics is highly dependant on the overall structure of emergency medical services in the territory where they are working.

In places where paramedics are recognized health care professionals registered with an appropriate body, they can conduct all procedures authorised for their profession, including the administration of prescription medication, and are personally answerable to a regulator. For example, in the United Kingdom, the Health Professions Council regulates paramedics and can censure or strike a paramedic from the register. In some cases paramedics may gain further qualifications to extend their status to that of a paramedic practitioner, which provides the right to prescribe, rather than just administer, medication.

In other places paramedics operate as a direct extension of a physician medical director, and practice as an extension of the medical director's license to practice medicine. The authority to practice in this semi-autonomous manner is granted in the form of standing order protocols (off-line medical control), and, in some cases, direct physician consultation via phone or radio (on-line medical control). Under this paradigm, paramedics effectively assume the role of out-of-hospital field agents to regional emergency physicians, with independent clinical decision-making authority that is typically enjoyed only by expert clinicians within the hospital setting. In some locations paramedics are only permitted to practice many advanced skills while assisting a physician who is physically present, except for immediately life-threatening emergencies.