Adapting the Community Paramedicine at Clinic (CP@clinic) program to a remote northern First Nation community: a qualitative study of community members’ and local health care providers’ views

• Published in: International Journal of Circumpolar Health
• Main Authors: Amelia Keenan, Pauneez Sadri, Francine Marzanek, Melissa Pirrie, Ricardo Angeles, Gina Agarwal
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Taylor & Francis Group 2023
• Subjects: Chronic disease; community paramedicine; delivery of health care; emergency medical technicians; Indigenous health services; primary health care; Arctic medicine. Tropical medicine; RC955-962; Arctic; Canada; Circumpolar Health; International Journal of Circumpolar Health
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1080/22423982.2023.2258025; https://doaj.org/article/9db67445963349f6a0b73d2179576a3e

ABSTRACTThe views of community Elders and health care providers in a rural remote First Nation community in Ontario, Canada on their health care landscape and adapting the Community Paramedicine at Clinic (CP@clinic) Program to their community are presented. Key informant interviews took place between September 2020 and March 2021, and were thematically analysed using the Framework Hierarchical Analysis. There were seven themes that emerged with many subthemes: available services in the community, health care access, health challenges in community, causes of frailty, health care and community appreciations, community-specific benefits of CP@clinic, and CP@clinic program considerations for adaptation. CP@clinic program considerations for adaptation included defining the role of CP, refining referral processes to capture the target population, advertising and promoting, ensuring community awareness, determining clinic setting and composition, focusing on advocacy and timely continuity, adding to the program through time, managing resistance, engaging community and partners, deploying cultural training and language accommodations, leveraging community assets, and ensuring sustainability. Focusing on continuity, engagement, and leveraging available resources may support the success of the CP@clinic program implementation. Findings from this study may be useful to other underserved communities in Canada seeking health programming.