Studying Paramedics Working Environment in a Trauma Scene

Paramedics work in changing working environments, under varied constrains. The goal of this study is to evaluate the way paramedics arrange their equipment when they are working in a trauma scene. We analyzed video that was captured during seven training simulation sessions, counting equipment movements at the scene during patient treatment.We found that in 86% of the sessions paramedics changed their equipment positions during patient treatment. Our analysis also found that the monitor and the medication bag moved at the beginning of the sessions, while the air-way bag moved during the middle part of the session.This study demonstrates that paramedics are operating in a working environment that is not designed for the tasks they need to perform. This suboptimal setting results in paramedics? need to change equipment positions while they are taking care of the patient. Future studies need to be done in order to develop recommendations for how to arrange the equipment around the patient in a way that would better fit the paramedics work around the patient.