Articles: cardiac-arrest.
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Erroneous time documentation of emergency treatment caused by the variation in the accuracy of timepieces has profound medical, medicolegal, and research consequences. The purpose of this study was to confirm the variation of critical timepiece settings in an urban emergency care system noted in previous studies and to implement and monitor the results of a prospective program to improve time synchronization. ⋯ Emergency medical timepieces are often inaccurate, making it difficult to reconstruct events for medical, medicolegal, or research purposes. Community synchronization of timepieces to the atomic clock can reduce the problem significantly, but the effects of a one-time attempted synchronization event are short-lived. [Ornato JP, Doctor ML, Harbour LF, Peberdy MA, Overton J, Racht EM, Zauhar WG, Smith AP, Ryan KA: Synchronization of time-pieces to the atomic clock in an urban emergency medical services system. Ann Emerg Med April 1998;31:483-487.].