The Annals of Emergency Dispatch and Response EDR journal is now on its feet and moving forward! Tons of thanks to the exemplary editorial leadership, peer-reviewers, and researchers for their tremendous input in establishing the journal. As we all (now) appreciate, establishing a peer-reviewed scientific journal of this nature and magnitude is no trivial task—I salute you all!
The reality of police dispatching is that there is nothing routine. Police calls change frequently simply due to the type of business. A perceived cold call of "breaking and entering" into a property can quickly turn into an in-progress "robbery" when it is discovered that a suspect is on the scene and has a weapon. A report of an "assault" can quickly turn into an "active assailant (shooter)" situation, one of the most dangerous and complex types of incidents. The constantly-changing police world is just never routine. Because of the constantly-changing nature of policing and police...
Diabetes mellitus is a leading cause of human disease, with 25.8 million Americans affected. It is estimated that 7 million (27%) of these patients are still formally undiagnosed. Diabetes can cause chronic or sudden signs and symptoms, which often result in observers calling 911 for assistance. The Emergency Dispatcher's interpretation of these calls affects dispatch triage and pre-arrival patient care. To determine the relationship between the EMDs' assigned Medical Priority Dispatch System (MPDS) determinant codes and patient severity indicators as determined by paramedic (or EMT) on-scene...
Emergency dispatch is a relatively new field, but the growth of dispatching as a profession, along with raised expectations for help before responders arrive, has led to increased production of and interest in emergency dispatch research. As yet, no systematic review of dispatch research has been conducted. This study reviewed the existing literature and indicated gaps in the research as well as potentially fruitful extensions of current lines of study. Dispatch-related terms were used to search for papers in research databases (including PubMed, MEDLINE, EMBASE, EMCARE, SciSearch, PsychInfo...
Telephone triage and advice services continue to be an integral part of health-care service delivery models in many countries. Research in this area has increased since the early 1990s, with a surge of research being published in the late 1990s and again in the late 2000s. This paper presents a scoping review of the telephone triage and advice service research to explore some of the most pressing questions related to how telenursing is researched and practiced, as well as how telenursing may complement emergency dispatch services. Methods: Five electronic...
911 centers receive a wide variety of calls for police-related incidents. Using the Police Priority Dispatch System (PPDS®), a 911 Emergency Police Dispatcher (EPD) categorizes each incident with a specific Chief Complaint (CC) and prioritizes the case using a systematic alpha-numeric coding matrix. The wide variation in CC types and specific codes assigned can profoundly affect staffing and resource deployment decisions made by law enforcement agencies. However, the frequency of specific call types and priority levels in the PPDS has not been studied formally to date. The objective of...
Central to the effectiveness of prehospital care is the ability of emergency medical dispatchers (EMDs), to rapidly categorise '999' calls and subsequently facilitate the dispatching of appropriate emergency ambulance personnel. There are many factors which affect productivity and/or performance in a work setting. These include shift work and experience. The London Ambulance Service (LAS) uses a structured, symptom- and incident-based protocol to triage emergency '999' calls. To our knowledge, factors potentially affecting compliance with this system have not been assessed in the UK...