Nurses' experiences of prehospital care encounters with children in pain.

BACKGROUND: Pain relief in children is a complex issue, partly an ethical dilemma and due to a lack of nursing competence. There are few studies regarding prehospital care encounters with children in pain. AIM: The aim of this study was to describe nurses' experiences in prehospital care encounters with children in pain and the specific related challenges. METHOD: This study has a qualitative design. Eighteen Swedish nurses participated in three focus group interviews analysed using qualitative content analysis. FINDINGS: The findings consist of a theme, "A challenge to shift focus and adjust to the child", and three categories describing prehospital care encounters with children in pain: "Being receptive and focusing on care," "Developing a trusting relationship," and "Providing professional nursing care." Caring for children in pain was stressful for the nurses. The nurses described how they had to shift focus and used different methods to build trust, such as playfulness, making eye contact, attracting curiosity, and using the parents to create trust. The also had to adjust to the child regarding dosages and materials. CONCLUSION: Nurses has to be practically, mentally, and theoretically prepared to care for children with prehospital pain. It is essential to evaluate the administration of adequate pain relief to children, and more evidence-based knowledge is necessary concerning the different modes of administering pain-relieving drugs to prehospital children.

Registered nurses' experiences of their decision-making at an Emergency Medical Dispatch Centre.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To describe registered nurses' experiences at an Emergency Medical Dispatch Centre. BACKGROUND: It is important that ambulances are urgently directed to patients who are in need of immediate help and of quick transportation to a hospital. Because resources are limited, Emergency Medical Dispatch centres cannot send ambulances with high priority to all callers. The efficiency of the system is therefore dependent on triage. Nurses worldwide are involved in patient triage, both before the patient's arrival to the hospital and in the subsequent emergency care. Ambulance dispatching is traditionally a duty for operators at Emergency Medical Dispatch centres, and in Sweden this duty has become increasingly performed by registered nurses. DESIGN: A qualitative design was used for this study. METHODS: Fifteen registered nurses with experience at Emergency Medical Dispatch centres were interviewed. The participants were asked to describe the content of their work and their experiences. They also described the most challenging and difficult situations according to the critical incidence technique. Content analysis was used. RESULTS: Two themes emerged during the analysis: 'Having a profession with opportunities and obstacles' and 'Meeting serious and difficult situations', with eight sub-themes. The results showed that the decisions to dispatch ambulances were both challenging and difficult. Difficulties included conveying medical advice without seeing the patient, teaching cardio-pulmonary resuscitation via telephone and dealing with intoxicated and aggressive callers. Conflicts with colleagues and ambulance crews as well as fear of making wrong decisions were also mentioned. CONCLUSIONS: Work at Emergency Medical Dispatch centres is a demanding but stimulating duty for registered nurses. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Great benefits can be achieved using experienced triage nurses, including increased patient safety and better use of medical resources. Improved internal support systems at Emergency Medical Dispatch centres and striving for a blame-free culture are important factors to attract and retain employees.

Reliability of a Swedish pre-hospital dispatch system in prioritizing patients.

The need of emergency help often begins with a call to a dispatch center. The operator uses a medical index to prioritize dispatches. Since the resources of ambulances are limited, it is important that the priority grading decided by the operator at the dispatch center is as adequate as possible. In the county of Jamtland in Sweden, a system for triage named METTS-A (Medical Emergency Triage and Treatment System-A) has been in use since 2009, when the patient is coded according to priority level. The aim of this study was to analyse the sensitivity and specificity of the priority grading made by the dispatch center in comparison with the METTS-A priority assessed by the ambulance nurse. Statistics from a data-base in northern Sweden were analyzed. The material covered every ambulance that was dispatched, 6986 times during the period of data collecting. The results show a high sensitivity but low specificity in the dispatch system. The results also indicate that over prioritization exists since most of the patients with a high acute need of an ambulance are correctly identified, while many patients without that need are also given a high priority ambulance service. Therefore the conclusions were that both over- and under prioritizations were made.