A NEW type of healthcare worker is being deployed in the region in an effort to take the pressure off emergency services.

County Durham and Darlington has been chosen as one of six sites in England to pilot the Emergency Care Practitioners (ECP) scheme.

If they are successful, the scheme will be introduced in the rest of the country.

The emergency care practitioners will be recruited from among nurses and paramedics.

After undergoing intensive training to improve their ability to assess and treat patients, they will be deployed from next April.

In some parts of County Durham and Darlington the emergency staff will be based at ambulance control.

When a 999 call is received and assessed as a minor injury or medical problem, an ECP will go to the scene in a car, rather than an sending an ambulance.

At the scene, the practitioner will decide whether they can treat the problem, whether the person needs to be visited by community nurses or whether social services need to be involved.

In other areas, ECPs will replace GPs when it comes to treating minor medical problems out of surgery hours.

Under this scheme ECPs will either treat patients in their homes or arrange to meet them at an urgent care centre.

Elsewhere in the pilot area ECPs could be based in "walk-in" treatment centres, such as centres pioneered in Newcastle and York.

The idea is a key part of the Government's plan to modernise healthcare and an attempt to free up the emergency services, enabling them to concentrate on incidents such as road accidents and heart attacks.

Ann Donnan, an emergency care planner for the six County Durham primary care trusts, said: "We are going to be looking at different ways of using the new emergency care practitioners.

"The idea is see the patient and treat the problem there and then. It is a very flexible way to deliver patient care."

She said: "It is a huge cultural change for everyone."

Initially about 30 experienced nurses and ambulance paramedics will be invited to apply to become ECPs.

They will complete a 15-week training course before being deployed across the County Durham and Darlington area.