• Hans O Birk and Lars O Henriksen.
• Rosskilde County Department of Health, University of Copenhagen, Faculty of Health Sciences, Institute of Public health, Department of health Services Research, Copenhagen, Denmark. SYHOB@RA.DK
• Prehosp Disaster Med. 2002 Jul 1;17(3):167-9.

IntroductionVery little evidence is available on the experience of ambulance-personnels or on the impact of prehospital interventions on total prehospital time.HypothesisOn-scene-time increases with the number of prehospital techniques used, and ambulance-technicians achieve only limited clinical experience in prehospital techniques.MethodsProspective, observational registry study including 56 ambulance technicians from two ambulance stations in the mixed urban/rural county and 5,557 patients who were brought to a hospital in 1998. The number of cases in which each ambulance-technician performed various kinds of prehospital techniques, and the average on-scene time for each prehospital technique and several combinations of prehospital techniques were calculated.ResultsThere were large differences between the number of times each technique was used. On-scene time was smallest when no techniques were used and tended to increase with the number of interventions used. On-scene-time was relatively low for patients with cardiac arrest.ConclusionThe Danish ambulance-technicians' curriculum includes interventions for which the technicians only achieve limited practical experience. Prehospital interventions are associated with an increase of on-scene time.

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