National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Report on Field EMS Experiments

This EMS portion of the Firefighter Safety and Deployment of Resources Study was designed in 2005 solely to assess the personnel number and configuration aspect of an EMS incident for responder safety, effectiveness, and efficiency. This scientific study does not address the efficacy of any patient care intervention. The study does however quantify first responder crew size, i.e., the number and placement of ALS trained personnel resources on the time-to-task measures for EMS interventions. Upon recommendation of technical experts, the investigators selected trauma and cardiac scenarios to be used in the experiments as these events are resource intensive and will likely reveal relevant differences in regard to the research questions.

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