Category: Uncategorized

What is the literature regarding situational awareness in EMS and healthcare?

Article by Veronica “Vee” Smith, MD Case It’s 11 o’clock in the morning on a sunny autumn day. Your radio alerts you about a mass casualty event and you are then dispatched to what turns out to be a school shooting. The estimated casualty count is over 20 with an unknown number of injured victims

Article by Erin Lincoln, MD Case Scenario: You are dispatched to a 68-year-old male in cardiac arrest.  His family has been performing bystander, and report that he suddenly collapsed just a few minutes ago. CPR is taken over by responding crews, and he is placed on a cardiac monitor/defibrillator. He is found to be in

Article Summary by Robert Skinner, MD Knapp, J., Haeske, D., Boettiger, B. W., Limacher, A., Stalder, O., Schmid, A., … & Bernhard, M. (2019). Influence of prehospital physician presence on survival after severe trauma: systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery, 87(4), 978-989. Background: The leading cause of death in the

By Tiffany Pleasent, MD Case Review A 64-year-old female calls 911 for severe shortness of breath and chest pain. An ALS crew arrives on scene to find a woman who is tachypneic, hypoxic, tachycardic, and hypotensive, with diffuse rales and rhonchi throughout her lung fields. She becomes altered and severely hypoxic. The attending paramedics begin

By Nicholas Maxwell, MD Case: You are bringing an elderly male with a DNR back to a living facility from a hospital. Approximately 10 miles away from the hospital, the patient suddenly decompensates. His pulse ox drops from 94% to 87% and his heart rate increased from about 110 beats per minute to approximately 180.

Article Summary by James Li, MD Sinclair, Julie E., et al. “Characteristics, prehospital management, and outcomes in patients assessed for hypoglycemia: repeat access to prehospital or emergency care.” Prehospital Emergency Care 23.3 (2019): 364-376. Background: Diabetes is a common chronic medical condition. The Centers of Disease Control and Prevention report a total of 37.3 million

By A.J. Meyer MD Clinical Scenario You are dispatched to a 57-year-old male with a witnessed cardiac arrest and bystander CPR being performed. On arrival to the scene, you find the patient pulseless and apneic. Your Fire Department colleagues take control of the airway and begin ventilating the patient with a BVM  and perform high

Article Summary by: Charles Hwang, MD, FAEMS, FACEP Article: Braude D, Steuerwald M, Wray T, Galgon R. Managing the Out-of-Hospital Extraglottic Airway Device. Ann Emerg Med. 2019 Sep;74(3):416-422. doi: 10.1016/j.annemergmed.2019.03.002. Epub 2019 May 3. Background Extraglottic airway devices (commonly referred to as supraglottic airway [SGA] devices) play an integral role in the prehospital airway algorithm