Annals of Emergency Dispatch & Response Logo

responding normally

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

Caller’s Ability to Understand “Responding Normally” vs. “Completely Alert” Key Question in a North American English version of an Emergency Medical Dispatch Protocol

Greg Scott, MBA, EMD-QI, Christopher Olola, PhD, Chris Davis, EMD-I, Bryon Schultz, BA, Charles Gipson, MA, Jeff J. Clawson, MD

Apr 04, 2022|AEDR 2022 Vol. 10 Issue 1|Original Research

The difficulty of evaluating 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.

Read more