scholarly journals Designing an App to Overcome Language Barriers in the Delivery of Emergency Medical Services: Participatory Development Process

10.2196/21586 ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
pp. e21586
Author(s):  
Eva Maria Noack ◽  
Jennifer Schulze ◽  
Frank Müller
Keyword(s):  
Work Environment ◽  
Emergency Care ◽  
Development Process ◽  
Language Barriers ◽  
End Users ◽  
Prehospital Emergency Care ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
Software Designers ◽  
Medical Software ◽  
Prehospital Emergency

Background In emergencies, language barriers may have dangerous consequences for the patients. There have been some technical approaches to overcome language barriers in medical care but not yet in the prehospital emergency care setting. The use of digital technologies in health care is expanding rapidly. Involving end users at all stages of the development process may help to ensure such technologies are usable and can be implemented. Objective We aimed to develop a digital communication tool that addresses paramedic needs in the specific circumstances of prehospital emergency care and helps paramedics to overcome language barriers when providing care to foreign-language patients. Methods We actively engaged paramedics and software designers in an action-oriented, participatory, iterative development process, which included field observations, workshops, background conversations, questionnaires on rescue missions, studying the literature, and preliminary testing in the field. Results With input from paramedics, we created an app with 600 fixed phrases supporting 18 languages. The app includes medical history–taking questions, phrases asking for consent, and phrases providing specific additional information. Children as patients, as well as their carers and other third parties, can be addressed with appropriate wording. All phrases can be played back audibly or displayed as text. The comprehensive content is grouped into categories and adapted to diverse scenarios, which makes the tool rapidly usable. The app includes a function to document patient responses and the conversation history. For evaluation in a clinical study, the app is run on a smartphone with extra speakers to be of use in noisy environments. The use of prototypes proved valuable to verify that the content, structure, and functions discussed in theory were of value and genuinely needed in practice and that the various device control elements were intuitive. Conclusions The nature of the paramedic work environment places specific demands on the communication options used and need for such devices. The active involvement of paramedics in the development process allowed us to understand and subsequently consider their experience-based knowledge. Software designers could understand the paramedics’ work environment and consider respective needs in the menu navigation and design principles of the app. We argue that the development of any medical software product should actively involve both end users and developers in all phases of the development process. Providing the users with the opportunity to influence technology development ensures that the result is closer to their needs, which can be seen as crucial for successful implementation and sustainable use. Trial Registration German Clinical Trials Register DRKS00016719; https://www.drks.de/drks_web/navigate.do?navigationId=trial.HTML&TRIAL_ID=DRKS00016719 International Registered Report Identifier (IRRID) RR2-10.1186/s12913-020-05098-5

scholarly journals Designing an App to Overcome Language Barriers in the Delivery of Emergency Medical Services: Participatory Development Process (Preprint)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Maria Noack ◽  
Jennifer Schulze ◽  
Frank Müller
Keyword(s):  
Work Environment ◽  
Emergency Care ◽  
Development Process ◽  
Language Barriers ◽  
End Users ◽  
Prehospital Emergency Care ◽  
Successful Implementation ◽  
Software Designers ◽  
Medical Software ◽  
Prehospital Emergency

BACKGROUND In emergencies, language barriers may have dangerous consequences for the patients. There have been some technical approaches to overcome language barriers in medical care but not yet in the prehospital emergency care setting. The use of digital technologies in health care is expanding rapidly. Involving end users at all stages of the development process may help to ensure such technologies are usable and can be implemented. OBJECTIVE We aimed to develop a digital communication tool that addresses paramedic needs in the specific circumstances of prehospital emergency care and helps paramedics to overcome language barriers when providing care to foreign-language patients. METHODS We actively engaged paramedics and software designers in an action-oriented, participatory, iterative development process, which included field observations, workshops, background conversations, questionnaires on rescue missions, studying the literature, and preliminary testing in the field. RESULTS With input from paramedics, we created an app with 600 fixed phrases supporting 18 languages. The app includes medical history–taking questions, phrases asking for consent, and phrases providing specific additional information. Children as patients, as well as their carers and other third parties, can be addressed with appropriate wording. All phrases can be played back audibly or displayed as text. The comprehensive content is grouped into categories and adapted to diverse scenarios, which makes the tool rapidly usable. The app includes a function to document patient responses and the conversation history. For evaluation in a clinical study, the app is run on a smartphone with extra speakers to be of use in noisy environments. The use of prototypes proved valuable to verify that the content, structure, and functions discussed in theory were of value and genuinely needed in practice and that the various device control elements were intuitive. CONCLUSIONS The nature of the paramedic work environment places specific demands on the communication options used and need for such devices. The active involvement of paramedics in the development process allowed us to understand and subsequently consider their experience-based knowledge. Software designers could understand the paramedics’ work environment and consider respective needs in the menu navigation and design principles of the app. We argue that the development of any medical software product should actively involve both end users and developers in all phases of the development process. Providing the users with the opportunity to influence technology development ensures that the result is closer to their needs, which can be seen as crucial for successful implementation and sustainable use. CLINICALTRIAL German Clinical Trials Register DRKS00016719; https://www.drks.de/drks_web/navigate.do?navigationId=trial.HTML&TRIAL_ID=DRKS00016719 INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT RR2-10.1186/s12913-020-05098-5

scholarly journals Which health-related reasons lead to prehospital emergency care and how does subjective emergency status connect to subsequent care?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silke Piedmont ◽  
Anna Katharina Reinhold ◽  
Jens-Oliver Bock ◽  
Enno Swart ◽  
Bernt-Peter Robra
Keyword(s):  
Health Insurance ◽  
Emergency Care ◽  
Third Party ◽  
Insurance Companies ◽  
Prehospital Emergency Care ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Life Threatening ◽  
Prehospital Emergency ◽  
Health Insurance Companies ◽  
Reported Data

Abstract Objectives/Background In many countries, the use of emergency medical services (EMS) increases steadily each year. At the same time, the percentage of life-threatening complaints decreases. To redesign the system, an assessment and consideration of the patients’ perspectives is helpful. Methods We conducted a paper-based survey of German EMS patients who had at least one case of prehospital emergency care in 2016. Four health insurance companies sent out the questionnaire to 1312 insured persons. We linked the self-reported data of 254 respondents to corresponding claims data provided by their health insurance companies. The analysis focuses a.) how strongly patients tend to call EMS for themselves and others given different health-related scenarios, b.) self-perceived health complaints in their own index case of prehospital emergency care and c.) subjective emergency status in combination with so-called “objective” characteristics of subsequent EMS and inpatient care. We report principal diagnoses of (1) respondents, (2) 57,240 EMS users who are not part of the survey and (3) all 20,063,689 inpatients in German hospitals. Diagnoses for group 1 and 2 only cover the inpatient stay that started on the day of the last EMS use in 2016. Results According to the survey, the threshold to call an ambulance is lower for someone else than for oneself. In 89% of all cases during their own EMS use, a third party called the ambulance. The most common, self-reported complaints were pain (38%), problems with heart and circulation (32%), and loss of consciousness (17%). The majority of respondents indicated that their EMS use was due to an emergency (89%). We could detect no or only weak associations between patients’ subjective urgency and different items for objective care. Conclusion Dispatchers can possibly optimize or reduce the disposition of EMS staff and vehicles if they spoke directly to the patients more often. Nonetheless, there is need for further research on how strongly the patients’ perceived urgency may affect the disposition, rapidness of the service and transport targets.

Developing a Lay First Responder Program in Chad: A 12-Month Follow-Up Evaluation of a Rural Prehospital Emergency Care Program

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (5) ◽  
pp. 546-553 ◽  
Author(s):  
Canaan J. Hancock ◽  
Peter G. Delaney ◽  
Zachary J. Eisner ◽  
Eric Kroner ◽  
Issa Mahamet-Nuur ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Emergency Care ◽  
Prehospital Emergency Care ◽  
Voluntary Participation ◽  
First Responder ◽  
Taxi Drivers ◽  
Post Test ◽  
Prehospital Emergency ◽  
Motorcycle Taxi

AbstractIntroduction:The World Health Organization (WHO; Geneva, Switzerland) recommends lay first responder (LFR) programs as a first step toward establishing formal Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to address injury. There is a scarcity of research investigating LFR program development in predominantly rural settings of LMICs.Study Objective:A pilot LFR program was launched and assessed over 12 months to investigate the feasibility of leveraging pre-existing transportation providers to scale up prehospital emergency care in rural, low-resource settings of LMICs.Methods:An LFR program was established in rural Chad to evaluate curriculum efficacy, using a validated 15-question pre-/post-test to measure participant knowledge improvement. Pre-/post-test score distributions were compared using a Wilcoxon Signed-Rank test. For test evaluation, each pre-test question was mapped to its corresponding post-test analog and compared using McNemar’s Chi-Squared Test to examine knowledge acquisition on a by-question basis. Longitudinal prehospital care was evaluated with incident reports, while program cost was tracked using a one-way sensitivity analysis. Qualitative follow-up surveys and semi-interviews were conducted at 12 months, with initial participants and randomly sampled motorcycle taxi drivers, and used a constructivist grounded theory approach to understand the factors motivating continued voluntary participation to inform future program continuity. The consolidated criteria for reporting qualitative research (COREQ) checklist was used to guide design, analysis, and reporting the qualitative results.Results:A total of 108 motorcycle taxi participants demonstrated significant knowledge improvement (P <.001) across three of four curricular categories: scene safety, airway and breathing, and bleeding control. Lay first responders treated 71 patients over six months, encountering five deaths, and provided patient transport in 82% of encounters. Lay first responders reported an average confidence score of 8.53/10 (n = 38). In qualitative follow-up surveys and semi-structured interviews, the ability to care for the injured, new knowledge/skills, and the resultant gain in social status and customer acquisition motivated continued involvement as LFRs. Ninety-six percent of untrained, randomly sampled motorcycle taxi drivers reported they would be willing to pay to participate in future training courses.Conclusion:Lay first responder programs appear feasible and cost-effective in rural LMIC settings. Participants demonstrate significant knowledge acquisition, and after 12 months of providing emergency care, report sustained voluntary participation due to social and financial benefits, suggesting sustainability and scalability of LFR programs in low-resource settings.

Nurse’s experiences of the caring encounter as single responder in prehospital emergency care

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 101051
Author(s):  
Veronica Vicente ◽  
Lenny Bergqvist ◽  
Moa Kvist ◽  
Rebecka Rubenson Wahlin ◽  
Helena Sjölin
Keyword(s):  
Emergency Care ◽  
Prehospital Emergency Care ◽  
Prehospital Emergency

Prehospital emergency care nurses’ strategies while caring for patients with limited Swedish-English proficiency

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (19-20) ◽  
pp. 3699-3705 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annika B Alm-Pfrunder ◽  
Ann-Charlotte Falk ◽  
Veronica Vicente ◽  
Veronica Lindström
Keyword(s):  
Emergency Care ◽  
English Proficiency ◽  
Prehospital Emergency Care ◽  
Prehospital Emergency
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