literature review

Is full pre-hospital spinal immobilisation best for the patient? A review of current controversies

Porth and Matfin (2008) describe SCI as damage to the neural elements of the spinal cord. SCIs are commonly classified using the American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) Impairment Scale (Figure 1)...

The diagnosis and management of acute cluster headache in the out-of-hospital environment

A review of contemporary literature on cluster headaches has been conducted to inform this article, specifically keeping in mind that any development of practice needs be carefully balanced with...

Analysis of pre-hospital consultations with crowd medical services at Premier League football club Fulham

Craven Cottage is the home stadium to Fulham FC, a Premiership football club situated in south west London, England. The club was started in 1879. In 1896, after two years of development, the club...

Is IV paracetamol as effective an analgesic as IV morphine for patients in non-cardiac pain? A literature review

The literature search, along with a Cochrane Database search was conducted on 3 April 2015. This question in its key terms was inputted into PubMed, the British Medical Journal (BMJ), University of...

Pre-hospital treatment of supraventricular tachycardia: a literature review

A research question was designed using the PICO process with a systematic Boolean search methodology. A MeSH (Medical Subject Heading) search was carried out on ‘paramedic’ and ‘pre-hospital’ to...

Emergency medical services (EMS) and waste: a review of the literature on sustainable EMS waste management

It has been claimed that ‘climate change presents the biggest single threat to health in the 21st century’ (Costello et al, 2009: 1693). As a result of this, services need to plan for the health...

Can pre-hospital recognition and intervention improve outcome for patients with severe sepsis?

A comprehensive literature review was completed to evaluate the available evidence, undertaken in late 2013.

Self-extrication in road traffic collisions: do we really need to cut the roof off?

This literature review incorporates two principal searches. Initially the review interrogated the Ovid Medline database, with search terms including ‘extrication’, ‘movement’, ‘pre-hospital’ and...

Rapid sequence induction and the paramedic

Rapid sequence intubation/induction (RSI) is an advanced procedure not currently advocated for UK paramedic practice although some paramedics attached to Helicopter Emergency Medical Services (HEMS)...

What makes clinicians decide to use spinal immobilisation? A review of the literature

‘Quadriplegia resulting from spinal instability missed by a clearance test had enormous impacts on longevity, quality of life, and costs, overshadowing the effects of prolonged collar application,...