• Pamela Ohman-Strickland, Frank Dossantos, Mark A Merlin, Kimberly T Baldino, David P Lehrfeld, Matt Linger, Eliyahu Lustiger, and Anthony Cascio.
• Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA. merlinma@umdnj.edu
• Am J Emerg Med. 2012 May 1;30(4):519-25.

ObjectiveOur objective was to determine if implementing a standard lights and sirens (L&S) protocol would reduce their use and if this had any effect on patient disposition.MethodsIn a prospective cohort study, we trained emergency medical services (EMS) personnel from 4 towns in an L&S protocol and enrolled control personnel from 4 addition towns that were not using the protocol. We compare the use of L&S between them over a 6-month period. Our protocol restricted the usage of L&S to patients who had maladies requiring expedited transport. Emergency medical services personnel from the control towns had no such restrictions and were not aware that we were tracking their usage of L&S. We also considered if patient disposition was affected by the judicious usage of L&S.ResultsPrehospital EMS personnel who were trained in an L&S protocol were 5.6 times less likely to use L&S when compared with those not trained. Of the 808 patients transported by both types of workers, no difference in patient disposition was observed.ConclusionsOur protocol significantly reduced the use of L&S. Judicious use of L&S has significant implications for transport safety. By allowing for selective transport with L&S usage, we observed no impact in patient disposition.Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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