Articles: emergency-medical-services.
-
Scand J Trauma Resus · May 2024
Observational StudyProcedural sedation by advanced practice providers in the emergency medical service in the Netherlands: a retrospective study.
Procedural sedation and analgesia (PSA) is a technique of administering sedatives to induce a state that allows the patient to tolerate painful procedures while maintaining cardiorespiratory function, a condition that is frequently desired prehospital. Non-physician prehospital clinicians often have a limited scope of practice when it comes to providing analgesia and sedation; sometimes resulting in a crew request for back-up from physician-staffed prehospital services.". This is also the case if sedation is desirable. Advanced practice providers (APPs), who are legally authorized and trained to carry out this procedure, may be a solution when the physician-staffed service is not available or will not be available in time. ⋯ During the study period, the APPs performed 135 PSAs and provided 22 sedations. The success rate of predetermined goals was higher than that stated in the literature. Although there were a number of side effects, their incidences were lower than those reported in the literature, and these were resolved by the APP during the episode of care. Applying a PSA by an APP at the EMS "RAV Brabant MWN" appears to be safe with a high success rate.
-
Scand J Trauma Resus · Apr 2024
Development of a trigger tool to identify harmful incidents, no harm incidents, and near misses in prehospital emergency care.
Emergency Medical Services (EMS) are a unique setting because care for the chief complaint is given across all ages in a complex and high-risk environment that may pose a threat to patient safety. Traditionally, a reporting system is commonly used to raise awareness of adverse events (AEs); however, it could fail to detect an AE. Several methods are needed to evaluate patient safety in EMS. In this light, this study was conducted to (1) develop a national ambulance trigger tool (ATT) with a guide containing descriptions of triggers, examples of use, and categorization of near misses (NMs), no harm incidents (NHIs), and harmful incidents (HIs) and (2) use the ATT on randomly selected ambulance records. ⋯ This study shows that a trigger tool together with a retrospective record review can be used as a method to measure the frequency of harmful incidents, no harm incidents, and near misses in the EMS, thus complementing the traditional reporting system to realize increased patient safety.
-
Scand J Trauma Resus · Apr 2024
A retrospective analysis of mission reports in the national Swedish Police Registry on mountain rescue 2018-2022: here be snowmobiles.
Increasing mountain activity and decreasing participant preparedness, as well as climate change, suggest needs to tailor mountain rescue. In Sweden, previous medical research of these services are lacking. The aim of the study is to describe Swedish mountain rescue missions as a basis for future studies, public education, resource allocation, and rescuer training. ⋯ These baseline data suggest snowmobiling, cardiac events, drownings, multi-casualty incidents, and backcountry internal medicine merit future study and intervention.
-
Scand J Trauma Resus · Apr 2024
Randomized Controlled TrialEffect of a vapor barrier in combination with active external rewarming for cold-stressed patients in a prehospital setting: a randomized, crossover field study.
Use of a vapor barrier in the prehospital care of cold-stressed or hypothermic patients aims to reduce evaporative heat loss and accelerate rewarming. The application of a vapor barrier is recommended in various guidelines, along with both insulating and wind/waterproof layers and an active external rewarming device; however, evidence of its effect is limited. This study aimed to investigate the effect of using a vapor barrier as the inner layer in the recommended "burrito" model for wrapping hypothermic patients in the field. ⋯ The use of a vapor barrier as the innermost layer in combination with an active external heat source leads to higher mean skin rewarming rates in patients wearing wet clothing who are at risk of accidental hypothermia.
-
Scand J Trauma Resus · Apr 2024
Multicenter Study Observational StudyDevelopment and internal validation of an algorithm for estimating mortality in patients encountered by physician-staffed helicopter emergency medical services.
Severity of illness scoring systems are used in intensive care units to enable the calculation of adjusted outcomes for audit and benchmarking purposes. Similar tools are lacking for pre-hospital emergency medicine. Therefore, using a national helicopter emergency medical services database, we developed and internally validated a mortality prediction algorithm. ⋯ Based on 11 demographic, mission-specific, and physiologic variables, we developed and internally validated a novel severity of illness algorithm for use with patients encountered by physician-staffed helicopter emergency medical services, which may help in future quality improvement.