Professional paper
TRANSPORTATION OF CRITICALLY ILL PATIENTS FROM ISLAND RAB WITH HELICOPTER EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICE
SILVESTRA ŠPANJOL KURILIĆ
orcid.org/0000-0002-7676-4002
; Emergency Medicine Institute of the Primorje-Goran County, Branch Rab, Rab, Croatia
DIANA RIBARIĆ ŠREDL
orcid.org/0000-0002-4944-5241
; Emergency Medicine Institute of the Primorje-Goran County, Branch Rab, Rab, Croatia
DARKO STOŠIĆ
orcid.org/0000-0002-0031-9818
; Emergency Medicine Institute of the Primorje-Goran County, Branch Rab, Rab, Croatia
Abstract
Emergency patients are transported from the island Rab to the nearest county hospital, the Clinical Hospital Center of Rijeka. Depending on the level of emergency they’re either transported with the emergency medical help vehicle or the helicopter emergency medical service. The objective of this paper is to fi nd the total time needed for the patient to arrive from the island Rab to the hospital with the help of HEMS − how much of that time is used for “decision time” on the need for emergency helicopter transfer, and how much of it is used for the helicopter fl ight. The work included processing the data from 56 interventions which started with the departure from the facility to the intervention site, followed by a direct departure from the intervention site to the heliodrom and ended with the delivery of the patient to the KBC Rijeka. The interventions also had to contain full data on the patient as well as the intervention. Data are retrospectively collected from the E-hitna program from 1st November 2018 till 30th September 2019. From the results, from total time of duration for intervention, an average of 61 minutes (46-77 minutes) is used for helicopter fl ight to and from the island. Further analysis of the data shows that the total time of duration for interventions varies from 72 to 133 minutes. The time that has passed from the moment the ground team arrived on the intervention site until the moment when the request for helicopter transfer was fi led is “decision time.” This time, needed for the ABCDE/ITLS examination and the evaluation of the patient’s emergency status, is divided into three groups of results up to: ≤ 10 minutes (19 interventions); > 10 ≤ 20 (24 interventions) and over > 20 minutes (13 interventions). Represented data show that many factors infl uence the total time of patient care in the emergency helicopter transport. Given that in these types of interventions the time is critical for the patient, time of examination and decision should not considerably increase the total time needed for the patient’s arrival to the hospital. This data can help provide faster and better patient care with the help of HEMS, since it recognize which times can be infl uenced on and therefore reduce the total time, while taking into consideration the average time needed for the helicopter fl ight, although it can not be infl uenced.
Keywords
critically ill patients; emergency medicine; helicopter emergency medical service; HEMS
Hrčak ID:
236588
URI
Publication date:
16.3.2020.
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