BACKGROUND Prehospital management of gunshot-wounded (GW) patients influences injury-induced morbidity and mortality. OBJECTIVES To evaluate prehospital management to GW patients emphasizing the protocol of patient transfer to appropriate centers. PATIENTS AND METHODS This prospective study, included all GW patients referred to four major, level-I hospitals in Mashhad, Iran. We evaluated de...

BACKGROUND There are three different types of ambulance systems, all of which can manage the same secondary intensive care patient transport mission: road ambulance, rotor-wing ambulance, and fixed-wing ambulance. We hypothesized that costs for specific transport distances would differ between systems. We aimed to analyze distances and observed times for ambulance intensive care secondary trans...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to examine the quality of handover of patients in the resuscitation room by describing the current perceptions of medical and ambulance staff. METHODS This was a descriptive survey using two anonymous questionnaires to gauge current opinion, one designed for medical staff and the other for ambulance staff. Questionnaires were distributed to medical staff i...

OBJECTIVE To assess the safety of nurses and paramedics offering telephone assessment, triage, and advice as an alternative to immediate ambulance dispatch for emergency ambulance service callers classified by lay call takers as presenting with "non-serious" problems (category C calls). DESIGN Data for this study were collected as part of a pragmatic randomised controlled trial reported elsew...

Objective The aim of the present study was to describe the Ambulance Victoria (AV) secondary telephone triage service, called the Referral Service (RS), for low-priority patients calling triple zero. This service provides alternatives to ambulance dispatch, such as doctor or nurse home visits. Methods A descriptive epidemiological review of all the cases managed between 2009 and 2012 was conduc...

Requirements: • The situations in which users perform their activities in urban spaces are characterized by various types of context. • The same piece of information may have different levels of significance for people acting in specific roles. People in specific situations Relevant Information The ambulance approaching to the incident spot An traffic alert The ambulance engaged in the rescue a...

BACKGROUND The ambulance milieu does not offer good thermal comfort to patients during the cold Swedish winters. Patients' exposure to cold temperatures combined with a cold ambulance mattress seems to be the major factor leading to an overall sensation of discomfort. There is little research on the effect of active heat delivered from underneath in ambulance care. Therefore, the aim of this st...

BACKGROUND Evidence of an association between fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and morbidity is limited in Asia. We used a case-crossover design to evaluate the association between short-term exposure to PM2.5 and emergency ambulance dispatches (as a proxy of acute health outcomes), and to calculate the extent to which a 10 μg/m(3) decrease in PM2.5 concentrations would reduce the number of ambu...