Studies suggest cardiac arrest risk associated with abnormal seizure-like activity increases with age, particularly in patients aged 35 or over. To account for this increased risk, there may be a need to add a new MPDS determinant code with a higher priority designation—probably one at the DELTA level.
Chest pain is the 3rd most common response type for EMS systems in the United States, comprising approximately 10% of 911 calls (NEMSIS, 2021)Chest pain is the 3rd most common response type for EMS systems in the United States, comprising approximately 10% of 911 calls (NEMSIS, 2021).
An important objective of Quality Improvement is to identify areas that need further training, so staff performance improves. The goal is for staff to successfully apply the concepts learned to future calls. But what happens when protocol performance still doesn’t meet expectations after multiple coaching sessions and training?
Ambulance times are internationally recognized Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for prehospital care. International benchmarking, by comparing ambulance times between countries is a valuable method to help to identify strengths and weaknesses across healthcare systems. However, terminology and definitions for ambulance times are not standardized across countries. Thus, this quality improvement project aims to compare terminology and definitions of ambulance times from the ambulance services of a range of countries to facilitate international benchmarking.
The important role 911 plays in behavioral health emergencies has drawn increased national attention in recent years, with new ideas emerging on how call centers and emergency responses can be more effective. But there is a relative lack of information about how call centers manage these emergencies, including how calls are assessed, what dispatch options are available, and how data on calls and outcomes is collected and shared.
With the recent implementation of 9-8-8, 9-1-1 telecommunicators across the nation were thrust into one of the most important partnerships they will ever encounter and one that may change the face of crisis response for good. The passage of this act ultimately laid the groundwork for establishing a three-digit number that would be easy to remember and utilized by those suffering from mental health crisis emergencies.
The speedy spread of the global outbreak of COVID-19 called for rapid deployment of tools to monitor its trends. In January 2020, the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch® (IAED) released an official statement about the novel coronavirus with specific guidelines for our Medical Priority Dispatch System (MPDS)-user agencies to use the Emerging Infectious Disease Surveillance (EIDS) Tool for Sick Person (Protocol 26), Breathing Problems (Protocol 6), and other Chief Complaints where the caller offers information leading the emergency medical dispatcher (EMD) to suspect a respiratory-type illness.
Research has showed that heart attacks present clinically with varying symptoms; and those symptoms are not always described by patients as chest pain or chest discomfort. Emergency Medical Dispatchers (EMDs) using the Medical Priority Dispatch System (MPDS™) are trained to select the Chest Pain/Chest Discomfort Protocol for non-chest pain heart attack symptoms or classic heart attack complaint of chest pain/chest discomfort. Nevertheless, it is still unknown how often callers report heart attack symptoms other than chest pain/chest discomfort, including what specific words/phrases they use to describe
The difficulty of evaluating the mental status, particularly alertness, is more pronounced in the medical dispatch context, where the Emergency Medical Dispatcher (EMD) must work through the eyes and ears of the caller, who is most likely a layperson. Determining true non-alertness and the level of its effects on outcome needs to be solved to perfect the interrogation and response-coding processes at dispatch.
Face, Arm, Speech, Time (FAST) public awareness campaigns improve stroke recognition in the general population. Whether this translates into improved emergency medical services (EMS) activation remains unclear. We assessed the effect of five consecutive FAST campaigns on EMS calls for suspected strokes in Quebec, Canada.
Public safety communicators (e.g., 911, police, fire, and ambulance call-takers), like many other public safety personnel (e.g., police, fire) suffer operational stress injuries (OSIs) that are too often hidden, and at rates that are higher than the general population. Unfortunately, there are very little data for OSI rates in Canadian communicators, and no known pan-Canadian studies focusing on organizational culture and its potential influence on OSIs, within the communicator context.
With several agencies represented at the 2021 Communication Center Manager class, there was a common theme of short staffing. While there are several facets to staffing in the Emergency Communications Center (ECC), for this study we chose to focus on finding the best candidate. Our definition of the best candidate is successful in training and stays for at least the duration of their initial certification period, typically two years.
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