The Effect of Hospital-based Emergency Medical Technician Training on the Prehospital Measurement of Vital Signs

Jo, You Hwan; Shin, Sang Do; Suh, Gil Joon; Kim, Jae San

Abstract

PURPOSE: To evaluate the effect of hospital-based emergency medical technician (EMT) training on pre-hospital evaluation.
METHODS
Three level 1 EMTs were trained at a regional emergency center for three months in an education program designed to improve pre-hospital evaluation. In order to assess the effectiveness of the training, we compared the rates at which EMTs measured vital signs during the three months before training (pre-training group) and the three months immediately after training (post-training group). We assigned one point to each of the following vital sign parameters when it was measured by an EMT: systolic blood pressure (SBP), diastolic blood pressure (DBP), pulse rate (PR), respiratory rate (RR), and body temperature (BT). The composite scores (range 0-5) were calculated and compared.
RESULTS
Of a total of 1,364 cases, 674 cases (49.4%) involved the pre-training group and 668 (52.2%) involved male patients. There were no significant differences in prehospital parameters (sex, proportion of injury, mental status, vital signs) or in pre-hospital management between the preand post-training group. The measurement rates of SBP, DBP, PR, and BT were not improved in the post-training group compared to the pre-training group, but the RR measurement rate was much greater in the post-training group than in the pre-training group (30.0% versus 7.7%, p<0.001). As a result, the composite score was also higher to a statistically significant degree in the post-training group (1.42+/-1.62 versus 1.18+/-1.39, p=0.003).
CONCLUSION
Hospital-based training for EMT improved the rate at which vital signs were measured, mostly particularly the respiratory rate.