Guidelines and General Resources

This video and discussion guide were developed by the Institute for Patient- and Family-Centered Care (IPFCC) in partnership with the American Hospital Association (AHA). While the information is hospital-centric, the concepts could be applied to the prehospital setting.

(scroll to bottom of page to watch video and downlaod the discussion guide)

This Toolkit was created to assist parents and caregivers in their efforts to support the EMSC Program at the national and state levels. The guide contains information about the history of the EMS system. It provides background information about the establishment, current status, and future endeavors of the EMSC Program and its Family Advisory Network (FAN). It addresses the importance of EMSC performance measures and how family representatives contribute to the success of each measure. Most importantly, this guide provides tips on everything needed to help family representatives get started and stay involved in the planning and implementation of state EMSC activities – including maintaining an effective working relationship with the state EMSC project manager, recruiting community partners, and educating legislators.

This brief describes how decisionmakers can encourage a model of care that truly reflects the needs, preferences and goals of patients and families.

This webpage provides details on, and resources for, the EMSC Family Advisory Network (FAN), a network developed to facilitate the inclusion of family representatives in the EMSC program.

Focuses on providing leadership for implementing core components of a system of care for children with special healthcare needs – includes definitions and principles of family-centered care and also a family-centered care self-assessment tools for both providers and families.

This presentation is part of the 2022 EMSC Day Webinar "COPE-ing with the Challenges of Pediatric Behavioral and Mental Health Emergencies". In this presentation, Dr. Kenshata Watkins reviews the ABC's of equity, diversity, & inclusion, with a focus on prehospital pediatric behavioral health in emergencies.

Presented February 20, 2019

Fatality Review personnel, caregivers, and workers dealing with bereaved families often express their need to know more about how to communicate with and provide services for families following an infant or child loss. This webinar will provide an overview of the types of infant and child loss, best practices for supporting families, expressions of grief, and how to recognize complicated grief reactions. The webinar will conclude with tips for processing our own feelings on grief and loss, vicarious trauma, and resources for self-care.

Children with chronic medical conditions rely on complex management plans for problems that cause them to be at increased risk for subop- timal outcomes in emergency situations. The emergency information form (EIF) is a medical summary that describes medical condition(s), medications, and special health care needs to inform health care pro- viders of a child’s special health conditions and needs so that optimal emergency medical care can be provided. This statement describes updates to EIFs, including computerization of the EIF, expanding the potential benefits of the EIF, quality-improvement programs using the EIF, the EIF as a central repository, and facilitating emergency pre- paredness in disaster management and drills by using the EIF. Pediatrics 2010;125:829–837

Free access

From AHRQ, The goal of the Working With Patients and Families as Advisors strategy is to bring the perspectives of patients and families directly into the planning, delivery, and evaluation of care. The tools that accompany this handbook are intended to help hospitals recruit and orient patient and family advisors and prepare clinicians and hospital staff to work with patient and family advisors.

PowerPoint presentation (PDF) from NAEMSP 2018 Annual Meeting. Presented by Dr. Saranya Srinivasan.

Objectives: After attending this presentation, the participant will be able to: 1) Define patient and family-centered care and discuss its importance in the prehospital environment; 2) Describe techniques for incorporating on-scene family members into the care team and involving the patient in his/her own care; 3) Describe effective strategies for communicating with family members and patients in a manner that is clear, consistent, and age-appropriate; 4) Identify resources that can be accessed to help integrate patient and family-centered care into their own EMS system

This document from NAEMT and HRSA MCHB describes family-centered care and provides tips for providing family-centered prehospital care.