evidence

How it's done: search tools and techniques for major bibliographic databases

Search planning is often ignored in favour of going directly to your search. However, a search plan helps you to think through some key questions before you start searching that will save you time...

Spotlight on Research

Consciousness may occur during cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) despite the absence of a palpable pulse. The phenomenon, known as CPR-induced consciousness (CPR-IC), was first described over three...

PaRamEDIc assessment of laCTate in OHCA and survival to hospital (PREDICT protocol)

Lactate is produced by most tissues in the human body, with the highest level of lactate production found in muscle (Consoli et al, 1990). In healthy subjects, lactate is the result of pyruvate...

Prehospital osmotherapy in isolated traumatic brain injury: a systematic review

TBI is the leading contributor to mortality, morbidity and disability globally, accounting for 30% of injury-related deaths in those aged 18–45 (Mangat, 2018). TBI is a national health priority, as...

SPOTLIGHT ON RESEARCH

Being trapped following a motor vehicle collision (MVC) provides its own set of challenges for the patient and the rescuers. Fire and rescue service (FRS) extrication strategies have developed on the...

Where to now? Searching beyond Medline

Repositories are essentially large databases of published and sometimes unpublished material. They are organised in two ways:.

Focused cardiac ultrasound in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: a literature review

Although the use of ultrasound is well established in hospitals, it did not emerge in the prehospital environment until the 1990s in the United States. Furthermore, paramedic use of ultrasound has...

Spotlight on Research

Over the past 30 years in Sweden, the ambulance response time in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) has doubled—yet counter-intuitively, the chances of surviving an OHCA have also substantially...

Spotlight on Research

Failure to identify pneumothoraces in prehospital care carries the potential for significant consequences due to the potential for worsening of the pneumothorax during transfer. Clinical assessment...

Alcohol/substance use and occupational/post-traumatic stress in paramedics

The purpose of this study was to undertake a systematic review of literature relevant to the paramedic profession, exploring the relationship between alcohol and substance use with occupational and...

Spotlight on Research

Survival from cardiac arrest is known to improve if patients receive good quality chest compressions as soon as possible. During cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) training, subjective assessment of...

Prehospital thrombolysis for STEMI where PPCI delays are unavoidable

Benger's (2016) research for the National Institute For Health Research (NIHR) noted that more than 30 000 cardiac arrests occurred outside the hospital in England every year (Benger, 2016; Out of...