Evidence Based Medicine in Prehospital Resuscitation

#evidencebasedmedicine #prehospital #resuscitation #research

Marius Rehn examines the difficulties and importance of evidence based medicine in prehospital resuscitation.
Combining academic activity with pre- and in-hospital clinical practice is hard work. So why should you do it?
There is no doubt the helipad is full of wonderful doctors and paramedics with a strong taste for the practical. With that being the case, being an academic in a flight suit can be quite lonely. Marius wants this to change and is passionate about increasing the quantity and quality of prehospital research.
Prehospital research that examines patient pathophysiology should dictate care – as it does in the hospital environment. Evidence based practice pertaining to the prehospital environment is minimal. This needs to change.
Evidence based medicine in the prehospital setting can dictate care, critically appraise practice and enable improvements in process and cost effectiveness whilst decreasing harms. Targeted research is required as in-hospital evidence cannot be extrapolated to the field. They are different things
Prehospital research is so critical as 5.8 million people die from injury every year – around 10% of the world’s deaths. Coupled with this is the fact that pre-hospital research is underfunded. There is a desperate need for relevant questions to be asked and answered, and a way to identify interventions that can be taken from the hospital to the streets that will have a meaningful effect.
Marius explains how this can happen. In this talk he details the ins and outs of conducting literature reviews in the field of prehospital care to identify what research is needed. He explains how to interpret the evidence and why all research is important to consider – from case studies all the way through to randomised controlled trials.
He highlights the need to lean on other members of the scientific community when conducting your own research. This is especially true in observational studies where a statistician is worth their weight in gold when fleshing out regression analysis.
Finally, Marius discusses the importance of information dissemination across all platforms. This includes peer reviewed journals and informal FOAMed platforms such as Twitter. They all have their place.
So, if you believe in the relevance of critically appraisal of practice to identify areas of improvement, areas of harm, and to optimise a resource-effective practice – let Marius discuss how to do pre-hospital research.