Can J Emerg Med
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Multicenter Study
What do community paramedics assess? An environmental scan and content analysis of patient assessment in community paramedicine.
Patient assessment is a fundamental feature of community paramedicine, but the absence of a recognized standard for assessment practices contributes to uncertainty about what drives care planning and treatment decisions. Our objective was to summarize the content of assessment instruments and describe the state of current practice in community paramedicine home visit programs. ⋯ Although community paramedicine home visit programs may differ in design and aim, all complete multi-domain assessments as part of patient intake. If community paramedicine home visit programs share similar characteristics but assess patients differently, it is difficult to expect that the resulting referrals, care planning, treatments, or interventions will be similar.
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Extant research has established an empirical relationship between fatigue and safety-related outcomes. It is not clear if these findings are relevant to Canadian paramedicine. The purpose of this study was to determine if fatigue and shiftwork variables were related to safety outcomes in Canadian paramedics. ⋯ These results create preliminary evidence of a relationship between fatigue and safety outcomes in Canadian paramedicine. While more research is needed, these findings point to the influence fatigue has on safety outcomes and provide an indication that fatigue mitigation efforts may be worthwhile.