prehospital

The challenges of pre-hospital paediatric trauma care

Who are the paediatric trauma experts? Prior to establishing trauma networks, the entire burden of paediatric trauma divided amongst receiving units led to an average of just over one case of major...

Severe burn injury—pre-hospital paramedic response—if it goes wrong

‘The patient with burns presents a difficult challenge to most health care personnel. Apart from the serious nature of the injury, there is the patient's discomfort, the distress of the patient and...

Clinical handover of the trauma and medical patient: a structured approach

‘The aim of any handover is to achieve the efficient communication of high-quality clinical information at any time when the responsibility for patient care is transferred’ (Yong et al, 2008)..

Is paramedic practice ready to adopt the NICE Transient Loss of Consciousness Guideline?

TLoC, or ‘blackout’ as it commonly referred to, is defined as the sudden loss of consciousness with complete recovery (NICE, 2010). TLoC is not a condition but a symptom which is generated by multiple...

Rhabdomyolysis: an overview for pre-hospital clinicians

Rhabdomyolysis is a syndrome that is characterised by the destruction of striated (skeletal) muscle leading to the release of cellular contents into the circulating blood plasma (Vanholder et al,...

Single-dose activated charcoal as a pre-hospital treatment for self-poisoning

A search strategy was undertaken of medical and nursing databases including Medline, Cinahl, Embase, Psychinfo, the Cochrane database of systematic reviews, together with the British Medical Journal...

Exploring emergency airway management techniques for paramedics

Ideally, the placement of an endotracheal tube should be performed in a controlled environment, although this is rarely possible in a community setting. With the high probability of gastric contents...

Exploring paramedic patient assessment

Records of battlefield first aid can be evidenced on Grecian pottery from as early as 500 BC, demonstrating early records of ambulances in alignment with military activities (Pearn, 1994). With global...

To alert, or not to alert? That is the question

Spotlight on Research is edited by Julia Williams, principal lecturer, paramedic science, University of Hertfordshire, Hatfield, Hertfordshire UK. To find out how you can contribute to future issues,...

Assessing the accuracy of Internet-based patient information for whiplash

An initial search was made by the authors to ascertain possible synonyms for whiplash that the general public may use to find more information about the condition. Four search engines were used:...