Poster Presentation Abstract

Introduction: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s Office of EMS (NHTSA EMS) estimates that there will be about 4,500 ambulance crashes this year. NHTSA EMS has also determined that 84% of EMS providers were not restrained in the patient compartment during transport. So why don’t providers wear seat belts? A small portion of this is attitude, but we believe that a much greater reason is that the design of present-day ambulances does not allow providers to render care and remain seated and secure. Program Development & Implementation: This poster will review the present-day situation and utilize pictures of an actual (fatal) ambulance crash as well as crash-test video stills. We will show hazards/injury areas and efforts that can be made to reduce them now. It will conclude with an attempt to reduce these hazards by introducing a new ambulance design from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology EMS. We have removed most cabinets and replaced them with drawers reducing strike zones.  We have eliminated “squad” and “CPR” benches and replaced them with three captain’s chairs with 5 and 6-point harnesses. Program Evaluation: The design incorporates the following recommendations from the Ambulance Patient Compartment Human Factors Design Guidebook: “Forward- or rear-facing seats better protect the Emergency Medical Service Provider (EMSP) in the event of an accident or evasive maneuver than side-facing seat. Each working position needs to be equipped with its own restraint system that meets all other restraint guidelines to ensure that all … are restrained while the ambulance is in motion.”¹ Discussion/Conclusion: This new ambulance was built by Braun Ambulance in a cooperative effort and incorporates many design recommendations that have been recommended for years.

References: 1. Avery L, Jacobs A, Moore J, Boone C, Malone T. (Prepared for U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate First Responders Group.) Ambulance Patient Compartment Human Factors Design Guidebook. https://www.dhs.gov/publication/ambulance-patient-guidebook. Published January 13, 2015. Accessed December 31, 2017.

Author & Article Information

Author Affiliations: Emergency Medical Services, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
Address for Correspondence: Mark Forgues, MEd, NRP. E-mail: markforgues@verizon.net
Conflicts of Interest/Funding Sources: By the JCEMS Submission Declaration Form, all authors are required to disclose all potential conflicts of interest and funding sources. The authors declared that they have no conflicts of interest. The author declared that they received funding from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Medical and MIT EMS.
Ethical Compliance: The author attest that the research associated with this abstract was conducted in accordance with the JCEMS Ethics Guidelines.
Prior Publication: Content included in this abstract and associated poster was previously published in: Forgues M. How We Built a Better Ambulance. EMS World. 2014;43(4):37-38.
Submission History: Received December 31, 2017; accepted for presentation and publication February 18, 2018.
Poster Presentation: This abstract was presented as a poster at the Academic Poster Session of the 25^th Annual Conference of the National Collegiate Emergency Medical Services Foundation; February 24, 2018; Philadelphia, PA, USA.
Published Online: August 10, 2018
Published in Print: August 13, 2018 (Volume 1: Supplemental 1)
Reviewer Information: In accordance with JCEMS editorial policy, poster presentation abstracts undergo double-blind peer-review by at least two reviewers (JCEMS Editorial Board members and/or independent reviewers) prior to acceptance for presentation and publication. JCEMS thanks the anonymous reviewers who contributed to the review of this work.
Copyright: © 2018 Forgues This is an open access abstract distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. The full license is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Electronic Link: https://doi.org/10.30542/JCEMS.2018.01.S1.12