43 Global resuscitation alliance utstein recommendations for developing emergency medical services systems to improve cardiac arrest survival

Abstract

Aim In Norway, each municipality is responsible for first line emergency healthcare, and has to have a general practitioner (GP) on call continuously. GPs are expected to assist patients and ambulance personnel at the site of severe injuries or illnesses. The Norwegian society invests substantial resources into emergency care, and it is desirable to find evidence to inform this practice. This systematic review aimed to examine how survival, time spent at the scene, the choice of transport destination, assessment of urgency, the number of admissions, and the number of cancellations of specialised prehospital resources were affected by the presence of a GP at the scene of a suspected severe injury. Method This systematic review utilised systematic, transparent methods. 1 We searched published and planned systematic reviews and primary studies in Cochrane Library, Medline, Embase, OpenGrey, GreyLit and trial registries in June 2016. Two authors independently screened the references and assessed the eligibility of all potentially relevant studies. The inclusion criteria for study design was based on the Cochrane Effective Practice and Organisation of Care Group (EPOC). 2 Results The search for systematic reviews and primary studies identified 5415 articles. However, no studies met the predefined inclusion criteria. Most studies were excluded because they did not investigate either the target population (severely injured) or the intervention in question (presence of a general practitioner). Conclusion It remains uncertain how the presence of a general practitioner at the injury scene might affect the selected outcomes.