Telephonic description of sepsis among callers to an emergency dispatch centre in South Africa

Stassen W, Larsson E, Wood C, Kurland L

Introduction Sepsis is an acute, life-threatening condition caused by a dysregulated systemic response to infection. Early medical intervention such as antibiotics and fluid resuscitation can be life-saving. Diagnosis or suspicion of sepsis by an emergency call-taker could potentially improve patient outcome. Therefore, the aim was to determine the keywords used by callers to describe septic patients in South Africa when calling a national private emergency dispatch centre.

Methods A retrospective review of prehospital patient records was completed to identify patients with sepsis in the prehospital environment. A mixed-methods design was employed in two-sequential phases. The first phase was qualitative. Thirty cases of sepsis were randomly selected, and the original call recording was extracted. These recordings were transcribed verbatim and subjected to content analysis to determine keywords of signs and symptoms telephonically. Once keywords were identified, an additional sample of sepsis cases that met inclusion …