Abstract

Background: There is little consolidated evidence for which prehospital and retrieval drugs a given service should carry.

Objectives: To suggest a core group of drugs based on the best evidence currently available.

Methods: This paper has reviewed documents from recognised evidence-based sources and put together an initial skeleton for an evidence-based drug pack.

Results: The resultant list of drugs is divided up into core agents with suggestions for regional variations. This may be of particular interest to de novo services.

Conclusions: This review offers a starting point for services based on the evidence currently available. It is hoped that prehospital and retrieval clinicians will start to look analytically at what they carry and, through a process of audit, aim to improve the evidence in this area. Future reviews and comparisons of worldwide prehospital and retrieval databases are suggested.