Riou, Marine, Ball, Stephen, Williams, Teresa A., Whiteside, Austin, O’Halloran, Kay L., Bray, Janet, Perkins, Gavin D., Smith, Karen, Cameron, Peter, Fatovich, Daniel M., Inoue, Madoka, Bailey, Paul, Brink, Deon and Finn, Judith (2017) ‘Tell me exactly what’s happened’ : when linguistic choices affect the efficiency of emergency calls for cardiac arrest. Resuscitation, 117 . pp. 58-65. doi:10.1016/j.resuscitation.2017.06.002

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Abstract

Background:
Clear and efficient communication between emergency caller and call-taker is crucial to timely ambulance dispatch. We aimed to explore the impact of linguistic variation in the delivery of the prompt “okay, tell me exactly what happened” on the way callers describe the emergency in the Medical Priority Dispatch System®.

Methods:
We analysed 188 emergency calls for cases of paramedic-confirmed out-of-hospital cardiac arrest. We investigated the linguistic features of the prompt “okay, tell me exactly what happened” in relation to the format (report vs. narrative) of the caller’s response. In addition, we compared calls with report vs. narrative responses in the length of response and time to dispatch.

Results:
Callers were more likely to respond with a report format when call-takers used the present perfect (“what’s happened”) rather than the simple past (“what happened”) (Adjusted Odds Ratio [AOR] 4.07; 95% Confidence Interval [95%CI] 2.05–8.28, p < 0.001). Reports were significantly shorter than narrative responses (9 s vs. 18 s, p < 0.001), and were associated with less time to dispatch (50 s vs. 58s, p = 0.002).

Conclusion:
These results suggest that linguistic variations in the way the scripted sentences of a protocol are delivered can have an impact on the efficiency with which call-takers process emergency calls. A better understanding of interactional dynamics between caller and call-taker may translate into improvements of dispatch performance.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Subjects:	R Medicine > RA Public aspects of medicine
Divisions:	Faculty of Medicine > Warwick Medical School > Health Sciences > Clinical Trials Unit Faculty of Medicine > Warwick Medical School > Health Sciences Faculty of Medicine > Warwick Medical School
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Personal emergency response systems, Emergency medical technicians, Cardiac resuscitation, Cardiac arrest -- Patients -- Treatment
Journal or Publication Title:	Resuscitation
Publisher:	Elsevier Ireland Ltd
ISSN:	0300-9572
Official Date:	August 2017
Dates:	Date Event August 2017 Published 6 June 2017 Available 5 June 2017 Accepted
Date of first compliant deposit:	28 June 2017
Volume:	117
Page Range:	pp. 58-65
DOI:	10.1016/j.resuscitation.2017.06.002
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Publication Status:	Published
Access rights to Published version:	Restricted or Subscription Access
Funder:	Australian Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (Aus-ROC), National Health and Medical Research Council (Australia) (NHMRC), St. John Ambulance Australia
Grant number:	Research Excellence #1029983 (NHMRC), Partnership Project #1076949 (NHMRC)
RIOXX Funder/Project Grant:	Project/Grant ID RIOXX Funder Name Funder ID UNSPECIFIED Australian Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (Aus-ROC) UNSPECIFIED UNSPECIFIED National Health and Medical Research Council http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000925 UNSPECIFIED St. John Ambulance Australia UNSPECIFIED

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