There can be several barriers to performing effective CPR on patients who call 911 service for help. One of the most challenging barriers is repositioning a patient found by the caller in a prone position i.e., on his/her belly. Existing medical dispatch pre-arrival instructions (on Medical Priority Dispatch System [MPDS®] Protocols Panel C2) provide no specific scripted instructions for repositioning the patient from prone to supine.
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?
Dr. Conrad Fivaz, President of Priority Solutions Inc and chair of the ECNS council of standards, Ellen Edwards, Senior Professional Practice Educator for Clinical Support Desk at Welsh Ambulance Service, and Dr. Mike Brady, Consultant Clinician NHS 111, discuss the implementation of video technology at the Welsh Ambulance Service NHS Trust (WAST). They go over best practices, the types of calls best handled with video technology, and clinician feedback.
Bonnie Guzman, 911 dispatcher for Hancock County 911 in Hancock, Indiana, and Richard VanOsdol, Sergeant with Hancock County Police Department, recount their successful baby delivery from both sides of the call.
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 primary objective of this study
was to determine the ability of an
Emergency Communication Nurse (ECN)
to appropriately identify the Abdominal
Pain Chief Complaint Protocol to use to
triage patients in low-acuity cases. The
secondary objectives were to establish
the most frequently used primary triage
code (Medical Priority Dispatch System™
(MPDS®) Determinant Codes), triggering
the use of the Abdominal Pain Chief
Complaint Protocol in the Emergency
Communication Nurse System™ (ECNS™),
as well as the percentage of these
calls resulting in a Recommended Care
Level (RCL) of “emergency a
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?”
