Focus on patient safety - "French emergency medical aid service. What if everyone played their part."

Context

The French emergency medical aid services (SAMU) are hospital services which manage both calls related to medical emergencies and also requests for non-programmed care.

The change in how the French emergency medical aid services have been used over the last ten years and their role in the healthcare pathway of patients render quality and safety initiatives essential, based on reflexive approaches, including reporting and analysis of serious adverse events.

The report on care-related serious adverse events (CRSAEs) reported by the French emergency medical aid services from March 2017 to 25 June 2019 demonstrates in particular non-observance of procedures and lack of allocation of tasks. ; this subject falls within a broader context of reinforcement of teamwork.

Objectives

By sharing this feedback from healthcare professionals confronted with theses serious adverse events, this focus on patient safety can be used to alert and raise awareness among the French emergency dispatch teams and their partners as to the occurrence of serious adverse events which could have been avoided by recalling the role of each individual.

So it doesn’t happen again

This focus on patient safety highlights failings in the individual roles of the stakeholders in call management, including the role of the patient and/or their family and communication.

A little like how an orchestra works, each link in the medical dispatch chain must know and play their own part so as not to induce errors caused by overstepping their role or not following set procedures. The patient and/or their family are stakeholders and have a role to play in the team to ensure the response is tailored to the patient’s situation.

An efficient medical dispatch team relies on team work and especially the distribution of roles between each person involved.