At first glance, the pieces in this issue of AEDR may not seem to have much in common. A statistician’s notes on the challenges of Big Data? A discussion of vehicles trapped in rising floodwaters? A review of the words and phrases that most often signal stroke? What could all of these things possibly have to do with one another? In terms of topic, not much; but in the bigger picture, these pieces have something much more important in common. They signal a sea change in dispatch research, a shift from a narrow focus on one or two critical incident types (mostly medical, mostly cardiac arrest-related) to
The first opportunity for prompt identification of a stroke in the prehospital environment often occurs when people telephone for emergency medical services. A better understanding of how callers and dispatchers communicate during emergency calls may assist dispatcher identification of stroke. To conduct a systematic review of the literature to determine communication factors associated with the identification of stroke during emergency calls. Six databases were searched (CINAHL, Cochrane, Embase, Informit, MEDLINE and PsychInfo). To meet...
The findings of a recent study suggest that a patient's inability to complete all three tasks in a stroke identification tool used by Emergency Medical Dispatchers (EMDs) is a uniquely strong predictor of stroke. To examine the characteristics of the 17 cases in which the patient was unable to complete all three tasks in the Stroke Diagnostic Tool (SDxT). The retrospective descriptive study utilized stroke data from three sources in Salt Lake County, Utah, USA—Emergency Medical Dispatch, emergency medical services (EMS), and receiving hospitals—for...
Every year 350–400 people die in submersed vehicles in North America, with these deaths accounting for up to 10% of all drownings. Vehicle submersion has the highest fatality rate of any type of single vehicle accident. In the past, emergency dispatch protocols for sinking vehicles either have been non-existent or were ineffective to deal with this rapidly deteriorating situation, in which a vehicle can fill with water and sink completely (if the water is deep enough), because with this type of incident, emergency response times are usually much longer than the period...
Emergency dispatch and emergency medical services (EMS) data keeps increasing every day—in quality, volume, and dimensionality. An Emergency Medical Dispatcher (EMD) at an emergency communication center is the primary link between the public caller requesting emergency medical assistance and EMS. Data collection starts when the EMD receives the call and ends when the patient is either treated on scene or admitted to the hospital. The data collected is mostly structured data containing both text and numerical data types. Data generated from emergency dispatch is very valuable...
This study is a subset of ongoing research and conversational analysis of recorded 911 calls into a California dispatch center from Spanish-speakers who requested language interpretation in communicating their emergencies. Findings reveal how each participant—callers, calltakers, and language interpreters—affects how emergencies were communicated and understood. This unique study researched the existing procedure when non-English speakers who are facing an emergency and place a 911 call connect with mostly English-speaking dispatchers and are connected to a language interpreter to communicate...
Few studies have described the clinical course and outcome of specific cohorts of patients identified by their 911 call type. Chest pain patients are especially important to study due to the time-sensitive nature of cardiac-related treatment. To describe the clinical course and outcome of patients identified as an MPDS Card 10 (Chest Pain), including the positive predictive value (PPV), with primary Emergency Department (ED) diagnosis. All 911 calls between November 1, 2011 and July 31, 2013, handled on Card 10 and pertaining to a patient...
The evaluation of emergency calls received by Emergency Medical Communication Centers (EMCCs) is the first and most basic step to activating the rescue chain. It also represents an essential prerequisite for an optimal management of critical patients, by optimizing the methods of public medical response and management time. The goal of the study is to evaluate whether the introduction of the Medical Priority Dispatch System™ (MPDS)® made more homogenous the evaluation of emergency calls among the five EMCCs in Liguria (primary) and among the EMCC's call takers in Genoa...
While Structure Fire is not the most common Chief Complaint handled by Emergency Fire Dispatchers (EFDs), the high death toll and other serious consequences that result make structure fires one of the most important types of calls EFDs handle. The time needed to appropriately and effectively prioritize these calls can be evaluated using a time standard called Call Prioritization Time (CPT). In this study, we evaluate CPT for centers using the Fire Priority Dispatch System (FPDS). The primary objective in this study was to determine CPT for the FPDS...
In a previous study, emergency dispatchers were surveyed to determine how stressful it was to handle various 911 calls. Given that it is not possible to change the inherent stress associated with the job of emergency dispatching, it is important to examine additional strains that contribute to making the job more stressful. This is critical for understanding the risk factors that contribute to the increased rate of stress injuries (i.e., acute stress disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, burnout) in this high-risk occupation. The current study examined the four calls that the previous study...
