It is with profound pleasure, humility and honor that I welcome you, the reader, to this inaugural issue of the Annals of Emergency Dispatch and Response (AEDR) – an official international peer-reviewed research journal published by the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch (IAED)®.
Emergency Dispatch is a process of making split-second decisions that concern the immediate health and safety of others, including situations of life and death. This process requires a proper dispatch environment, emergency infrastructure, and process management. Recent scientific research offers insights that can and should be applied and implemented in the field of Emergency Dispatch. Since a Public Safety Access Point (PSAP) is expected by the public to be a high-reliability organization, it has to be engineered as such; both humans and machines are quintessential components in achieving...
Geographic variation in the incidence of time sensitive conditions (e.g. myocardial infarction (MI) and stroke) in the United States has been described by the Centers for Disease Control. These annual estimates of stroke and MI mortality by both state and county are based on data from national administrative datasets (e.g. Medicare and National Vital Statistics). For example, in Colorado, acute MI deaths by county can vary from 10.7/100,000 people to 148.7/100,000 people, almost a 14-fold difference. Although these county level variations are large, there is no data on how acute MI mortality...
The most pressing question in dispatch research, and in particular police dispatch, is: How can we accurately measure event outcomes? Police calltaking and dispatch is perhaps the least measured of all emergency call processing methodologies. Traditionally, police organizations view the communications center as playing a minor role in event outcomes. This could not be further from the truth. There is no shortage of call examples where the lack of information regarding a police event (i.e. not enough good information collected at the time of calltaking) has had a significant negative impact on...
Emergency Medical Dispatchers (EMDs) play an important role in modern-day Emergency Medical Services (EMS), especially as compared to the minimal logistics role simple dispatchers filled years ago. Today, EMDs serve as gatekeepers, resource allocators, non-visual clinicians, and scene resource coordinators, and are familiar with nearly every operational and clinical aspect of an emergency call. Because of their wide range of training, experience, and involvement, EMDs can be a tremendous resource for today's less involved managers and administrators, provided they are acknowledged and...
Over 25 years ago I started my first 911 center job in a large urban system in California. Our communication center was a secondary Public Safety Answering Point (PSAP), and as such, all 911 callers reporting a medical or fire emergency were transferred to our center from the 911 calltakers in the primary PSAP agency. With the rather auspicious title of System Status Controller, my primary role was to direct the dispatching and deployment of paramedic ambulances in the system. Most importantly, I was tasked with tracking the unit response time of every paramedic vehicle dispatched to each...
Today we have reached a truly historic moment—literally a "red-letter day" in Emergency Dispatch. This is the first journal in EMS and public safety history dedicated to the evidence-based foundation of the science of Emergency Dispatch and Response Determination. The evolution of emergency medical dispatch, followed by the fire and police dispatch disciplines, has to date largely been based on clinical and on-line observational experience as recommended, and validated, by the most knowledgeable experts in all of public safety. This process is now complemented by this journal's...
In the late 1970s, a new and innovative idea emerged from the developing science of prehospital emergency medicine: Emergency Medical Dispatch raised its head as a positive and well-intentioned, albeit unproven, idea. Focusing on sending the right response to the right person at the right time and in the right way, Emergency Medical Dispatch has over the last 30+ years grown and developed into what many of us know and use today. Over the last 15 years, it has become increasingly evident that properly trained emergency medical dispatchers (EMDs) are a crucial link in the EMS chain of patient...
Emergency medical dispatch centers are important interfaces between the public and emergency medical resources. The public expects dispatchers to provide sound, safe, and immediate instructions for dealing with life-threatening situations and other emergencies. Dispatchers are gatekeepers for allocation of resources such as ambulances, medical personnel, and hospital capacity, and therefore need efficient tools when prioritizing scarce resources based on the specific needs of the triaged emergency call. Currently most dispatch centers offer only voice communication, but there is an increasing...