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Pragmatic Problems in Prehospital Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2017

James J. Menegazzi
James J. Menegazzi*
Affiliation:
University of Pittsburgh, Center for Emergency Medicine, Pittsburgh, Penn.
*
Center for Emergency Medicine, 230 McKee Place, Suite 500, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA
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Extract

Emergency Medical Services (EMS) researchers face a variety of obstacles when conducting out-of-hospital investigations. This paper reviews some common problems and discusses practical solutions to facilitate the process and help avoid traps. This discussion focuses on prospective prehospital research.

One challenge to EMS research is to find new methods of improving the quality of care delivered in the field. There has been an emphasis placed on “exciting” topics, such as cardiac arrest and trauma resuscitation. Other events dominate the daily practice of prehospital medicine, but have not been well-studied. For example, what is the best way to immobilize the spine? What should be done for a patient with a suspected C-spine injury who is wearing a motorcycle helmet? No one has a scientifically proven approach to solve these common prehospital problems. There is a need to look at problems such as immobilization, asthma, overdose, and congestive heart failure to see what can be done differently in the field.

Keywords

Emergency Medical ServicesEMSResearchPrehospitalChallengesDesignPrehospital CareRandomizationSamplingBiasNuisance VariablesInclusion CriteriaExclusion CriteriaBlindingPlaceboData Collection
Type
Research Article
Information
Prehospital and Disaster Medicine , Volume 8 , supplement S1: Research in Prehospital Care Systems , March 1993 , pp. S15 - S19
Copyright
Copyright © World Association for Disaster and Emergency Medicine 1993

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