TY - JOUR T1 - 999 EMS Research Forum, Harrogate, 29 June–1 July 2001 JF - Emergency Medicine Journal JO - Emerg Med J SP - 164 LP - 168 DO - 10.1136/emj.19.2.164 VL - 19 IS - 2 A2 - , Y1 - 2002/03/01 UR - http://emj.bmj.com/content/19/2/164.abstract N2 - A. Heward, C. Hartley-Sharpe. London Ambulance Service NHS Trust, 220 Waterloo Road, London, SE1 8SD, UK Introduction: The Advanced Medical Priority Dispatch System (AMPDS) is currently used by over 90% of the statutory ambulance services in the United Kingdom. This system uses a systematic method of questioning the caller to triage emergency calls made to the control rooms. In 19 out of the 32 protocols used, the question `Is the patient alert (able to talk)?' is asked. If the response is `no' then most ambulance services allocate their highest response to the call. Feedback from operational and control room staff suggest that in the majority of cases, where the call is not trauma related, this information is inaccurate and that the call is heavily over-prioritised, stretching resources and adversely affecting performance. Objectives: To determine whether the information obtained by the AMPDS question `Is the patient alert'? confirmes the ambulance crews findings (recorded on the patient report form using the AVPU scale) upon their arrival at scene. Methods: Based on feedback from staff, four `not alert' determinants that did not relate to trauma calls were selected. A consecutive sample of 325 call records that had been allocated these determinants from the first week of December 2000 was identified. The control room (AMPDS) documentation and the patient report form were compared to determine whether the AMPDS information matched the findings of the ambulance crew. The results were documented on a Microsoft® Excel® spreadsheet. Findings: From the 325 calls collated, 65 were inappropriate for analysis. Of the 260 cases analysed, the patient was fully alert in 86% (SD±7.6) of cases, verbally responsive in 9%(SD±4.3) of cases, 4.5% (SD±3.4) of the time the patient was responsive to pain only and in 0.5% (SD±0.5) of cases the patient was unresponsive. There was no evidence documented … ER -