The care provided by emergency medical services (EMS) varies widely in the United States. The Institute of Medicine report, “EMS at the Crossroads,” notes that an area of improvement for EMS is the need for more uniform quality care and the need to develop measures for EMS quality. A major area of EMS quality that is difficult to measure is the prehospital protocols that EMS personnel follow while taking care of patients. These protocols vary widely between jurisdictions. In the state of California, EMS care is divided into 33 separate local EMS agencies (LEMSAs). These government agencies are a countywide or region-wide system of first responders and ambulance transporters that operate under one set of medical control policies.
Protocols for chest pain of suspected cardiac origin vary widely across the state of California. The evidence-based recommendations that we present for the prehospital diagnosis and treatment of this condition may be useful for EMS medical directors tasked with creating and revising these protocols.
Protocols for a patient with a suspected stroke vary widely across the State of California. The evidence-based recommendations that we present for the prehospital diagnosis and treatment of this condition may be useful for EMS medical directors tasked with creating and revising these protocols.
Protocols for a patient with a seizure, including eclampsia and febrile seizures, vary widely across California. These recommendations for the prehospital diagnosis and treatment of seizures may be useful for EMS medical directors tasked with creating and revising these protocols.
In the United States emergency medical services (EMS) protocols vary widely across jurisdictions. We sought to develop evidence-based recommendations for the prehospital evaluation and treatment of a patient with an acute change in mental status and to compare these recommendations against the current protocols used by the 33 EMS agencies in the State of California. Read more at: http://emdac.org/altered-mental-status.html#ams-toxicological-causes
