Emergency medicine journal : EMJ
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To determine whether there are prehospital differences between blacks and whites experiencing out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and to ascertain which factors are responsible for any such differences. ⋯ Blacks were less likely to experience a return of spontaneous circulation than whites, less likely to receive defibrillation or cardiopulmonary resuscitation from EMS and more likely to receive medications from EMS. Differences in underlying health, care prior to the arrival of EMS, and delays in the notification of EMS personnel may contribute to racial disparities in prehospital survival after out-of-hospital cardiac arrest.
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Emergency doctors must make decisions for many patients in a limited time. Various emergency cases are not compatible with routine conditions as described in textbooks, so doctors use clinical decision making (CDM) processes to act in the best possible way. In the present work, these processes and some of the related factors were assessed. ⋯ The rule-based process is the most common CDM process used by emergency doctors, perhaps because of the minimisation of human error in this process. CDM choice may be influenced by triage level, treatment room and doctors' educational levels. Revealing and studying these factors may help shift decisions to the best possible decision making levels, defining a model in future research.