When I was younger, I spent a lot of time at science fairs—so much time, in fact, that two of the three new cars my parents bought during my childhood were purchased while I was busy presenting three-sided foamcore posters to skeptical rounds of judges. My favorite project was the one I did in fourth grade. I wanted to find out whether heated gels were stronger or weaker than cold ones. In other words, would heating or cooling my bubble-blowing syrup help me make bigger bubbles? It was a great project. It was messy and required me to...
Risk management is an area of critical importance for emergency services and public safety agencies, including emergency communication centers. However, almost no information currently exists regarding litigation against, or involving, emergency dispatch. The primary objective in this study was to characterize the most common types of adverse events, actions, and omissions of action that lead to lawsuits against emergency dispatchers and their agencies. The study was a systematic literature review...
Sick Person (Specific Diagnosis) is one of the most commonly used Chief Complaint Protocols in the Medical Priority Dispatch System™. Within the Sick Person Protocol, the 26-A-1 coding represents a group of patients with no specific identifiable complaint. This vague categorization presents a problem for dispatch systems and EMS responders alike, since so little is captured about the patient's true condition. The objective of this study was to determine whether changing the order of the "No" answer choice on the...
Training that aligns with learners' expectations and preferences can help improve job satisfaction and reduce turnover. Previously published results described the preferences of supervisors and trainers. However, little is known about emergency dispatchers' own preferences and expectations regarding training topics, styles, or delivery methods. The objective of this study was to describe the training methods and topics emergency dispatchers find most effective, what characteristics define successful versus unsuccessful...
The time to beat is 17 years. We think we can blow it out of the water. In 2011, a group of researchers from Cambridge University compiled studies on research "lags"—the time it takes to convert research findings into useful patient care applications—and found that the average was 17 years. That's 17 years to go from a discovery in the lab to care for a patient, 17 years from studying a phenomenon to saving a life, 17 years from having an insight about care to implementing it. The broader term for the movement from research findings to practice is "translational science," which can include...
Chief Complaint selection is one of the most important skills for an emergency dispatcher to develop—and one of the most critical moments in any emergency call for help. Selecting the correct Chief Complaint at the opening of the call helps ensure that the correct information will be gathered, the most appropriate response sent, and the most life-critical instructions provided. For many emergency medical dispatchers (EMDs), the selection of Protocol 26 – Sick Person (Specific Diagnosis) is among the most challenging. This is due to the complexity of the protocol, since this requires...
Opioid overdoses have reached critical proportions in the United States of America (USA or US) and worldwide. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that more than 90 Americans die every day from opioid overdose, and the epidemic was recently declared a national public health emergency. One response to the crisis has been to increase the availability of naloxone HCl (commonly referred to by the brand name NARCAN), a treatment that reverses the effects of opioid overdose when injected or inhaled. The Medical Priority Dispatch System (MPDS®) version 13.0 includes instructions...
Extrication activities at the scene of motor vehicle accidents (MVA) result in extended scene times, and increase morbidity and mortality. Identifying the need for extrication-capable resources during the 9-1-1 call-taking process, and dispatching them without delay, is crucial to delivering the required response and patient care. Determining the need for extrication using this protocol currently relies on the 9-1-1 caller's answer to a single key question in the protocol: "Is anyone pinned (trapped)?" The aims of this study were to determine the predictive value of the single key question...
In emergency dispatching, pre-alerts are used to send responders to calls prior to getting a final dispatch code—assigned using an emergency dispatch system. Although this dispatching process has been used for several years, no research studies have demonstrated its significant benefit, in general. However, a study published in 2013, showed that pre-alerts can be effectively used to reduce dispatch time for out-of-hospital cardiac arrests (OHCAs), which has the potential to improve overall patient outcome. As emergency calls are received, the call is entered in the Computer Aided Dispatch...
Emergency dispatchers are no strangers to misunderstandings about what they do. Even the U.S. government classifies emergency dispatchers as "clerks," rather than as the protective service professionals they are. In research on emergency dispatch, we see plenty of misunderstanding as well. Mostly, it comes in the form of narrowed focus. When people talk about emergency dispatch research, they generally mean they're studying one of two things times or cardiac arrests. The vast majority of emergency dispatch research over the past twenty years has focused on one of these two topics. Yet as...
