Features

Plan for quality improvement: the ‘Legal High’ Guide

‘Legal highs’ were highlighted by the media after suspected deaths across several countries were associated with the use of mephedrone (also known as ‘meow meow’ or M-CAT), with 70 in the UK. The...

Spotlight on Research

With the advent of stroke centres and the increasing use of reperfusion therapies in stroke management, the need to correctly identify strokes in a timely manner is vital in reducing subsequent...

End-tidal CO2 monitoring in the pre-hospital environment: more than just endotracheal tube placement confirmation

Measurement of carbon dioxide in expired ventilation gases has been used in anaesthesia practice since the late 1970s (Sinclair, 1998) and is mandatory practice in anaesthesia departments across the...

An introduction to black humour as a coping mechanism for student paramedics

Before going any further it is necessary to define the term ‘gallows humour’. Gallows humour is a type of humour that arises from stressful, traumatic or life-threatening situations (Moran and Massam,...

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...

Mass-gathering medical care: a retrospective analysis

‘Protecting the health and wellbeing of the participants and spectators from infection and intentional injuries related to improper food, water, waste, land and road traffic management’ .

Teaching to encourage deep learning in paramedic science students: a case study

Ramsden (2003) highlights that students will not automatically learn the skills required to critically analyse, to link ideas and to apply them to real-life situations. Education needs to be...

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...

Spotlight on Research

As the title alludes to, this study took place across 10 European emergency medical services with the aim of determining if real-time objective feedback, while training on manikins, improves CPR...