The emergence of emergency medical services (EMS) as a realm within emergency medicine (EM) has recently been completed, with EMS gaining status as a boarded subspe-cialty. While there are excellent journals and a rich literature addressing EMS and out-of-hospital care, we embraced, with enthusiasm, the invitation of the editors to coordinate an EMS-related special issue on prehospital Care. Th...

INTRODUCTION Little is known about the risk perceptions and attitudes of healthcare personnel, especially of emergency prehospital medical care personnel, regarding the possibility of an outbreak or epidemic event. PROBLEM This study was designed to investigate pre-event knowledge and attitudes of a national sample of the emergency prehospital medical care providers in relation to a potential...

BACKGROUND Inter-hospital teleconsultation improves stroke care. To transfer this concept into the emergency medical service (EMS), the feasibility and effects of prehospital teleconsultation were investigated. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Teleconsultation enabling audio communication, real-time video streaming, vital data and still picture transmission was conducted between an ambulance an...

The role of doctors in prehospital care in the United Kingdom and the USA was compared using information obtained from a visit to the city of Houston emergency medical service (Houston, Texas) and from a review of published reports. The involvement of full time specialist emergency medical services physicians has been crucial to the development of improved standards of practice within American ...

BACKGROUND Historic advances in combat prehospital care have been made in the last decade. Unlike other areas of critical care, most of these innovations are not the result of significant improvements in technology, but by conceptual changes in how care is delivered in a tactical setting. The new concept of Tactical Combat Casualty Care has revolutionized the management of combat casualties in ...

BACKGROUND High energy trauma is rare and, as a result, training of prehospital care providers often takes place during the real situation, with the patient as the object for the learning process. Such training could instead be carried out in the context of simulation, out of danger for both patients and personnel. The aim of this study was to provide an overview of the development and foci of ...

One of the most notable trends in child health has been the increase in the number of children with special health care needs, including those with complex chronic conditions. Care of these children accounts for a growing fraction of health care resources. We examine recent developments in health care, especially with regard to medical transport and prehospital care, that have emerged to adapt ...

OBJECTIVES Few low income countries have emergency medical services to provide prehospital medical care and transport to road traffic crash casualties. In Ghana most roadway casualties receive care and transport to the hospital from taxi, bus, or truck drivers. This study reports the methods used to devise a model for prehospital trauma training for commercial drivers in Ghana. METHODS Over 3...

objective: most previous retrospective studies failed to show a consistent association between pre-hospital time intervals and mortality in trauma patients, bringing the recommendation of “transport fast to increase survival” under question. the aim of this study was to evaluate the association of response time, scene time, and transport time with 24-hour in-hospital mortality.   methods: in th...