Observational studyScandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine2018
Initial assessment, level of care and outcome among children who were seen by emergency medical services: a prospective observational study.
Observational study in Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
What it found
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- Children and young people assessed by ambulance clinicians in a sparsely populated circumpolar region: non-conveyance and subsequent healthcare contacts in Northern Sweden.International journal of circumpolar health · 2026Article
- Patient safety and predictors for subsequent healthcare contact after self-care referral from Swedish ambulance services: a retrospective cohort study.BMC emergency medicine · 2026Article
- Adaption of a trigger tool to identify harmful incidents, no harm incidents, and near misses in prehospital emergency care of children.BMC emergency medicine · 2024Article
- Mortality after paediatric emergency calls for patients with or without pre-existing comorbidity: a nationwide population based cohort study.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2024Article
- Ambulance quality and outcome measures for general non-conveyed populations (AQUA): A scoping review.PloS one · 2024Article
- Prehospital vital sign monitoring in paediatric patients: an interregional study of educational interventions.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2023Article
- Prehospital triage tools across the world: a scoping review of the published literature.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2022Article
- Why do infants need out-of-hospital emergency medical services? A retrospective, population-based study.Scandinavian journal of trauma, resuscitation and emergency medicine · 2021Article
- Characteristics of non-conveyed patients in emergency medical services (EMS): a one-year prospective descriptive and comparative study in a region of Sweden.BMC emergency medicine · 2020Article
- Observational
- The performance of the EMS triage (RETTS-p) and the agreement between the field assessment and final hospital diagnosis: a prospective observational study among children < 16 years.BMC pediatrics · 2019Observational
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe assessment of children in the Emergency Medical Service (EMS) is infrequent representing 5.4% of the patients in an urban area in the western part of Sweden. In Sweden, patients are assessed on scene by an EMS nurse whom independently decides on interventions and level of care. To aid the EMS nurse in the assessment a triage instrument, Rapid Emergency Triage and Treatment System-paediatrics (RETTS-p) developed for Emergency Department (ED) purpose has been in use the last 5 years. The aim of this study was to evaluate the EMS nurse assessment, management, the utilisation of RETTS-p and patient outcome.
methodsA prospective, observational study was performed on 651 children aged < 16 years from January to December 2016. Statistical tests used in the study were Mann-Whitney U test, Fisher's exact test and Spearman's rank statistics.
resultsThe dispatch centre indexed life-threatening priority in 69% of the missions but, of all children, only 6.1% were given a life threatening RETTS-p red colour by the EMS nurse. A total of 69.7% of the children were transported to the ED and, of these, 31.7% were discharged without any interventions. Among the non-conveyed patients, 16 of 197 (8.1%) visited the ED within 72 h but only two were hospitalised. Full triage, including five out of five vital signs measurements and an emergency severity index, was conducted in 37.6% of all children. A triage colour was not present in 146 children (22.4%), of which the majority were non-conveyed. The overall 30-day mortality rate was 0.8% (n = 5) in children 0-15 years.
conclusionsDespite the incomplete use of all vital signs according to the RETTS-p, the EMS nurse assessment of children appears to be adapted to the clinical situation in most cases and the patients appear to be assessed to the appropriate level of care but indicating an over triage. It seems that the RETTS-p with full triage is used selectively in the pre-hospital assessment of children with a risk of death during the first 30 days of less than 1%.
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