Annals of Emergency Dispatch & Response Logo

Greg Scott, MBA, EMD-QI

Caller’s Ability to Understand “Responding Normally” vs. “Completely Alert” Key Question

Valeria De Cassia Pereira, RN, EMD-QI, Sara Scott, Maristela Uta Nakano, MD, MBA, Greg Scott, MBA, EMD-QI, Christopher Olola, PhD, Isabel Gardett, PhD, Srilakshmi Sangaraju, MS, Irena Weight, Daniel Ashwood, PhD, Edward Trefts, MFA, Brett Patterson, Jeff J. Clawson, MD

Aug 04, 2021|Research Posters

Anecdotally, numerous MPDS® (Priority Dispatch Corp., Salt Lake City, Utah, USA)-user agencies in the USA, Canada, UK, and Brazil have reported that the emergency caller has difficulty understanding the key question (KQ) “Is s/he completely alert?”

Read more

Situational Awareness in Emergency Medical Dispatch

Isabel Gardett, PhD, Greg Scott, MBA, EMD-QI, Meghan Broadbent, MS, Christopher Olola, PhD, Madison Bramwell, MEd

Aug 04, 2021|Research Posters

Situational awareness (SA, also called situation awareness) is the ability to take in relevant information about an event in order to understand it and take effective action. Maintaining effective SA as an emergency medical dispatcher (EMD) may be more difficult than in other, similarly complex roles because of the remote nature of an emergency call for help.

Read more

IS EMD LOW-ACUITY CODE SELECTION INFLUENCED BY A SOFTWARE MODIFICATION?

Greg Scott, MBA, EMD-QI, Christopher Olola, PhD, Isabel Gardett, PhD, Meghan Broadbent, MS, Bryon Schultz, BA, Lisa Burnette, Jeff J. Clawson, MD, Srilakshmi Sangaraju, MS

Aug 04, 2021|Research Posters

Sick Person (Specific Diagnosis) is one of the most commonly used Chief Complaint Protocols in the Medical Priority Dispatch System (MPDS). This protocol is often used when a caller does not report any specific or high-priority symptoms. Of particular concern is the 26-ALPHA-1 determinant code, which refers to a person with “No priority symptoms” and none of the specific symptoms listed on the ALPHA-code drop-down list (Fig. 1).

Read more

CHARACTERISTICS OF HOSPITAL-CONFIRMED ACUTE MYOCARDIAL INFARCTION CASES CODED AS LOW-ACUITY AT DISPATCH

Christopher Olola, PhD, Meghan Broadbent, MS, Isabel Gardett, PhD, Greg Scott, MBA, EMD-QI, Jeff J. Clawson, MD

Aug 04, 2021|Research Posters

Cardiovascular disease remains the most common cause of death worldwide, with ischemic heart disease (IHD) causing nearly nine million deaths per year. Coronary heart disease (CHD) is estimated to cause about one-third of all deaths in people over 35 years old, and the incidence of CHD is expected to continue to rise. Acute myocardial infarctions (AMIs)—heart attacks—represent a significant portion of this overall CHD mortality, with approximately 620,000 Americans suffering a first heart attack, and 295,000 suffering a repeat event, each year.

Read more

PERSONS DESCRIPTIONS REPORTED TO EMERGENCY POLICE DISPATCH

Meghan Broadbent, MS, Isabel Gardett, PhD, Chris Knight, Greg Scott, MBA, EMD-QI, Jeff J. Clawson, MD, Christopher Olola, PhD

Aug 04, 2021|Research Posters

Identification of persons based on verbal descriptions is one of the key skills of police work. This includes identifying suspects, but also locating missing persons, identifying a person needing help in a public assist call, or finding and helping a person who is threatening suicide. Correct identification can lead to reduced loss of life, reunions of missing persons with their loved ones, and apprehension of suspects, while incorrect identification can have terrible unintended consequences for both officers and civilians.

Read more

WHICH PROTOCOL FOR TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS: MEDICAL, FIRE, OR POLICE?

Chris Knight, Christopher Olola, PhD, Greg Scott, MBA, EMD-QI, Isabel Gardett, PhD, Jeff J. Clawson, MD

Aug 04, 2021|Research Posters

Traffic incidents (collisions and crashes) are among the most common call types handled by Emergency Communication Centers (ECCs). They are also among the most complex call types because they represent such a range of possible situations. These can range from “fender benders” with no injuries and little or no property damage—in which case a single law enforcement officer might be an appropriate response—to mass-casualty events involving trains, buses, or other large, multipassenger vehicles.

Read more

Welcome Message from the Editor-in-Chief

Greg Scott, MBA, EMD-QI

Jun 22, 2021|AEDR 2021 Vol. 9 Issue 1|Editor's Message

Since our last issue was released in early January 2021, we have moved into a new stage of the COVID-19 pandemic—one of great promise, but also new dangers. It has been said by numerous epidemiological experts that we are now in a race to vaccinate enough of the population to stem the disease spread, before new and more potent virus variants threaten to ravage the world. Weathering more than a year of this pandemic makes it truly remarkable that so many dispatch agencies continue to perform at...

Read more

Welcome Message from the Editor-in-Chief

Greg Scott, MBA, EMD-QI

Jan 20, 2021|AEDR 2020 Vol. 8 Issue 3|Editor's Message

As we begin a new year and close the books on 2020, uncertainty, disruption, and stressful conditions continue all around us. Public safety and public health services have been pushed to their extremes throughout much of the last year. The fallout from this extended effort, with all its accompanying tension and strain, will surely be studied for years to come. Yet even before this current crisis existed, emergency telecommunicators faced many challenges. In this issue, two groups of...

Read more

Are You with the Patient Now? Distribution of EMD Calls by Caller-Party Type

Bryon Schultz, BA, Greg Scott, MBA, EMD-QI, Jeff J. Clawson, MD, Srilakshmi Sangaraju, MS, Christopher Olola, PhD

Oct 28, 2020|Research Posters

Caller-party type may determine the accuracy of the information collected by the EMD. Has this distribution changed in the past decade? Are EMD’s gathering more accurate information? And why is the caller party dynamic changing? The objective is to retrospectively look at the distribution of the caller-party type in a mostly urban/suburban, high performance EMS system. ProQA data from 2004 to 2017 was extracted and evaluated to identify any trends. This was a retrospective, descriptive, and uncontrolled study of de-identified medical dispatch data, collected using ProQA data from an...

Read more