STUDY OBJECTIVES To survey emergency care providers about their stethoscope-cleaning measures and to determine the correlation between these measures and the extent of Staphylococcus carriage. DESIGN Prospective cross-sectional analysis. SETTING University-affiliated community hospital ED. PARTICIPANTS One hundred fifty health care providers, comprising emergency medicine house staff and ...

Prehospital emergency medical services often operate in the most challenging and austere environments. Checklist use for complex tasks in these circumstances is useful but must make task completion simpler, faster and more effective. The SPEEDBOMB checklist for Prehospital Rapid Sequence Induction (PRSI) management rapidly addresses critical steps in the RSI process, is designed to improve chec...

INTRODUCTION Time to treatment is the key factor in stroke care. Although the initial medical assessment is usually made by a non-neurologist or a paramedic, it should ensure correct identification of all acute cerebrovascular accidents (CVAs). Our aim was to evaluate the accuracy of the physician-made prehospital diagnosis of acute CVA in patients referred directly to the neurological emergenc...

Emergency medical services (EMS) systems, and prehospital care are difficult to evaluate. Accordingly, the true efficacy and value of such systems are difficult to determine. The multitude of variations and combinations of involved factors makes standardisation and comparison difficult, and universal indicators are hard to develop. Various attempts have been made to determine valid indicators o...

BACKGROUND Emergency care research is rarely undertaken in low- and middle-income countries. A manageable 'road map' for research in South African (SA) emergency care is needed to address research gaps. OBJECTIVE To identify, collate and prioritise research topics from identified knowledge gaps in emergency care in SA. METHODS Seventy-six individuals were invited to participate in a modifie...

The practice of emergency medicine (EM) has been intertwined with emergency medical services (EMS) for more than 40 years. In this commentary, we explore the practice of translating hospital based evidence into the prehospital setting. We will challenge both EMS and EM dogma-bringing hospital care to patients in the field is not always better. In providing examples of therapies championed in ho...

BACKGROUND An improved prehospital diagnostic accuracy of cardiogenic pulmonary oedema could potentially improve initial treatment, triage, and outcome. A pilot study was conducted to assess the feasibility, time-use, and diagnostic accuracy of prehospital lung ultrasound (PLUS) for the diagnosis of cardiogenic pulmonary oedema. METHODS A prospective observational study was conducted in a pre...

BACKGROUND Few studies have discussed the emergency call and prehospital care as a continuous process to decrease the prehospital and in-hospital delays for acute stroke. To identify features associated with early hospital arrival (<90 minutes) and treatment (<120 minutes), we analyzed the operation of current dispatch protocol and emergency medical services and compared stroke recognition by d...