do the right patients use the ambulance service in south-eastern finland做正确的病人使用救护车服务芬兰东南部.pdfVIP

International Journal of Clinical Medicine, 2011, 2, 544-549 doi:10.4236/ijcm.2011.25089 Published Online November 2011 (http://www.SciRP.org/journal/ijcm) Do the Right Patients Use the Ambulance Service in South-Eastern Finland? —A Prospective Descriptive Study of Ambulance Dispatching in Relation to the Ambulance Staff’s Assessment of Patients’ Needs in a Subset in the South East of Finland Björn-Ove Suserud1 2 3 4 5 1 , Lena Beillon , Ingvar Karlberg , Jukka Pappinen , Maaret Castren , Johan Herlitz 1University of Borås, Borås, Sweden; 2Nordic School of Public Health, Göteborg, Sweden; 3Center for Health System Analysis, Goth- enburg, Sweden; 4Tampere University, Tampere, Finland; 5Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden. Email: {bjornove.suserud, johan.herlitz}@hb.se, lena-marie.beillon@preem.se, ingvar.karlberg@med.gu.se, jukka.pappinen@uta.fi, maaret.castren@sodersjukhuset.se Received September 14th, 2011; revised October 22nd, 2011; accepted November 6th, 2011. ABSTRACT Background : Several Emergency Medical Systems use a criteria-based prioritization system for ambulance response. The emergency medical priority dispatching of ambulances was introduced in the 1980s. In a system of this kind, the operators at the medical emergency dispatch centers have to assess the patients’ symptoms and the need for ambulance response. The prioritization of the ambulance response is based on the seriousness of the patient ’s symptoms, his/her current condition and, in the case of trauma, the trauma mechanism. The priority system is supposed to optimize the use of the ambulance service and to match and meet the patients’ needs with an adequate response from the ambulances. The aim of this study was to describe the dispatching and utilization of the ambulance service in a part of Finland. Re- sults : There was a substant