A pre-hospital emergency response framework for better work coordination

Coordination is a significant factor for any emergency medical team in delivering an effective and efficient service to its community. Despite the perceived importance on coordination, there is a lack of studies on its role in most pre-hospital emergency responses. In this research, we observed and studied the process flow of an often-crowed medical center for about a year. Towards the end, we suggested a framework involving the paramedics, nurses and technicians. The framework is later tested if it could reduce the patient treatment time in emergency cases. Hence, a survey study involving paramedics and technicians was conducted to evaluate the feasibility of our proposed framework where authors studied the effect after applying the framework. Only responses completed with pre-hospital care time were analyzed for the total time differences. Interviews were extended to the experts to further confirming the validity of this framework. As a result, 400 dispatches for pre-hospital care treatment were analyzed. Among these, 200 pre-hospital cases were compared to the remaining 200 cases after grouping the data following N-X-O design. It is found that there are statistically significant differences between the two groups. Interview reviewed that the treatment time become better and better services deliver to the patients. It could be conclude that the proposed framework could help the paramedics to deliver a faster service to patients. This conformed to our earlier hypothesis about coordination. The coordination as suggested in the PRIER framework is rare but generally useful for any emergency medical center where paramedics aimed to take faster and appropriate actions on surviving patients. This helps to conclude that a framework based on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) could improve a service quality for better coordination.