Emergency medicine journal : EMJ
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To investigate if paper-based documentation in the authors' emergency medical service (EMS) satisfies scientific requirements. ⋯ Documentation of vital parameters is carried out incompletely, and documentation of respiratory rate is particularly poor, making calculation of accepted emergency scores infeasible for a significant fraction of a given test population. The suitability of paper-based documentation is therefore limited. Electronic documentation that includes real-time plausibility checks might improve data quality. Further research is warranted.