INTRODUCTION Pre-hospital ambulance calls are not random events, but occur in patterns and trends that are related to movement patterns of people, as well as the geographical epidemiology of the population. This study describes the geographic-time epidemiology of ambulance calls in a large urban city and conducts a time demand analysis. This will facilitate a Systems Status Plan for the deploym...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Launch of the National Stroke Foundation stroke awareness campaigns has occurred annually during Stroke Week (September) since 2004. From 2006, the campaign used FAST (Face, Arm, Speech, Time) with calling an ambulance added in 2007. The aim of this study was to explore the impact of these campaigns on ambulance dispatches for stroke (Medical Priority Dispatch Card 28) in...

OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to explore the choice of transportation mode to hospital in patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and to determine the factors influencing the use of ambulance. DESIGN, SETTING AND PARTICIPANTS This cross-sectional study was conducted in a tertiary and teaching hospital in China. The study was carried out between 24 August 2015 and 24 July 2016. A to...

Background Vital signs outside the normal range on arrival to an emergency department are related to a poor prognostic outcome. However, the knowledge of the prognostic value of vital signs measured in the ambulance is scarce. The aim of the study was to describe vital signs measured in the ambulance (saturation, systolic blood pressure, pulse, respiratory frequency and Glasgow Coma Scale (GCS)...

Introduction: Reports indicate that 22%–64% of travelers experience some illness when in a foreign country. To date, no prior study has reported the use of ambulances by travelers or the epidemiology of travel-related injury. Methods: In this retrospective study, we aimed to describe ambulance use by international travelers, including the rates of travel-...

BACKGROUND Reviews of the literature on the health and work environment of ambulance personnel have indicated an increased risk of work-related health problems in this occupation. The aim of this study was to compare health status and exposure to different work environmental factors among ambulance personnel and the core work force in Denmark. In addition, to examine the association between phy...

Objective: Emergency workers, including ambulance personnel, must cope with a variety of duty related stressors including traumatic incident exposures. Little is known about the variables that might be associated with post-traumatic stress symptom in high risk occupational groups such as ambulance personnel. This study investigated the prevalence of post-traumatic stress disorder among Swedish ...

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 staV. Methods—This was a descriptive survey using two anonymous questionnaires to gauge current opinion, one designed for medical staV and the other for ambulance staV. Questionnaires were distributed to medical staV in two ...

BACKGROUND From January 30-February 6, 2011, New South Wales was affected by an exceptional heat wave, which broke numerous records. Near real-time Emergency Department (ED) and ambulance surveillance allowed rapid detection of an increase in the number of heat-related ED visits and ambulance calls during this period. The purpose of this study was to quantify the excess heat-related and all-cau...

BACKGROUND Medical emergency motorcycles (MEM) can be used in time-critical conditions like cardiac arrest and multi-traumatized patients in an attempt to reduce the response time. Other potential benefits with MEM are more efficient patient evaluation, reduction of unnecessary EMS car ambulance missions and reduced cost. The potential benefits have been evaluated in this study. The incidence o...