Australian paramedics' provision of analgesia for older fallers

This research, undertaken in Australia over a period of nine months, aimed to outline factors influencing paramedics' clinical decisions related to provision of analgesia, and report on both frequency of administration and effectiveness of analgesia in older fallers with suspected fractures.

The paper reports on the analysis of a subset of patients extracted from a larger data set collected during a prospective, observational study examining pre-hospital management of older people who had fallen.

The study population for this part of the research consisted of 333 patients; the average age was 82 years and 75% were female. The most common site of suspected fracture was the hip. Although the population was sampled in Australia, based on these broad demographics the findings appear, at least in principle, to be transferable to a UK setting.

The range of analgesics that ambulance clinicians in Australia are allowed to administer is dependent on their clinical grade, which is not dissimilar to the situation in the UK. However, the actual analgesic agents available include drugs which are not common within UK paramedic practice, such as intranasal fentanyl.