• Benjamin J Lawner, Jose Victor Nable, and William J Brady.
• Department of Emergency Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD 21201, USA. blawn001@umaryland.edu
• Am J Emerg Med. 2012 Jul 1; 30 (6): 966-71.

AbstractEmergency physicians, specialists, and primary care doctors across the health care delivery spectrum remain actively engaged in the provision of medical oversight for emergency medical services (EMS) systems, a vital link in the medical continuum of care. Practicing emergency physicians, regardless of their level of formal EMS training, interface with EMS system components and providers on a regular basis. It is important to remain aware of trends and practice patterns that have the potential to affect the care of emergency patients. PubMed was used to find articles for this review. The authors included EMS articles from 2010 felt applicable to all emergency physicians that fit the general topics discussed in this review. Some key articles from 2009 were also included. Case series were generally excluded. The selection is by no means an attempt to single out the best research articles. Like a single 12-lead electrocardiographic (ECG) tracing, this review represents a “snapshot” of current discussions in the EMS community. Prehospital medicine is a dynamic discipline, and its practice patterns are not identical to those found in a hospital emergency department (ED). The purpose of this literature review is to familiarize emergency physicians with some of the ongoing discussions in the prehospital literature.

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