Prehospital emergency care : official journal of the National Association of EMS Physicians and the National Association of State EMS Directors
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Crush injuries have the potential to cause life-threatening systemic effects such as hyperkalemia, dysrhythmias, acute kidney injury, and renal failure. Systemic involvement is known as crush syndrome (CS) and results from tissue ischemia and muscle necrosis. ⋯ Hyperkalemia should be presumed in any crush injury and be treated empirically and aggressively. Although tourniquet application prior to extrication is not widely recommended to prevent CS, it should be considered in prolonged extremity entrapment.
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Objective: A burn mass casualty incident (BMCI) involving 499 patients occurred at a "color party" in Taiwan in June 27, 2015. We implemented a study to identify critical challenges regarding the prehospital emergency care in BMCIs. Methods: A 3-stage, mixed methods study was conducted in 2016. ⋯ Results: Our study indicated that the signs of inhalation injury needed to be incorporated in the field triage protocol for BMCIs; the collaborative utilization of regional emergency medical services may improve the surge capacity in the field; and an "island-hopping" strategy for patient transportation may allow the healthcare systems to manage the surge of burn patients more efficiently. Conclusions: Current field triage protocols may be insufficient for burn patients and should be further investigated. The practices in field triage, transport capacity, and transfer strategy can be considered as a part of an efficient prehospital emergency response to BMCIs.
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Presented here are the 18 abstracts from the sixth annual "Innovations in EMS Education" poster session, held at the NAEMSP Annual Meeting in Austin, Texas in January 2019. The session accepts submissions on all aspects of EMS education for all types of providers, but some preference is given to submissions on the education of EMS fellows. All submissions were reviewed and scored in a blinded fashion by a selection committee made up of representatives of the NAEMSP Education Committee, Program Committee, and Council of EMS Fellowship Directors. The order of listing is random.
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The National Association of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Physicians emphasizes the importance of high quality communication between EMS providers and emergency department (ED) staff for providing safe, effective care. The Joint Commission has identified ineffective handoff communication as a contributing factor in 80% of serious medical errors. The quality of handoff communication from EMS to ED teams for critically ill pediatric patients needs further exploration. ⋯ Handoff communication between EMS and ED teams during pediatric resuscitation was frequently incomplete and inefficient. Future educational and quality improvement interventions could aim to improve the quality of handoff communication for this patient population.
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Background: Bullying as a stressor in the workplace has been evaluated in numerous settings. It has never been evaluated in the emergency medical service (EMS) environment where bullying can occur from many different sources. The Negative Acts Questionnaire-Revised (NAQ-R) is a 22-question validated tool for evaluating bullying. ⋯ Cross validation resulted in a misclassification risk estimate of 0.12 ± .03. Conclusion: NAQ-R bullying scores in EMS are similar or higher than numbers in other fields. Five questions on the NAQ-R were 94% accurate in identifying victims of bullying in EMS providers.