You are here

  • Home
  • Archive
  • Volume 7, Issue 7
  • The linguistic and interactional factors impacting recognition and dispatch in emergency calls for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: a mixed-method linguistic analysis study protocol

Article Text

Article menu

Download PDFPDF

XML
Health services research
Protocol
The linguistic and interactional factors impacting recognition and dispatch in emergency calls for out-of-hospital cardiac arrest: a mixed-method linguistic analysis study protocol
  1. Marine Riou1,
  2. Stephen Ball1,
  3. Teresa A Williams1,2,
  4. Austin Whiteside2,
  5. Kay L O’Halloran3,
  6. Janet Bray1,4,
  7. Gavin D Perkins5,
  8. Peter Cameron4,
  9. Daniel M Fatovich6,7,
  10. Madoka Inoue1,
  11. Paul Bailey1,2,
  12. Deon Brink1,2,
  13. Karen Smith4,8,
  14. Phillip Della9,
  15. Judith Finn1,2
  1. 1 Prehospital, Resuscitation and Emergency Care Research Unit (PRECRU), School of Nursing, Midwifery and Paramedicine, Curtin University, Bentley, Australia
  2. 2 St John Ambulance (WA), Belmont, Australia
  3. 3 School of Education, Curtin University, Bentley, Australia
  4. 4 Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Victoria, Australia
  5. 5 Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest Outcomes, Warwick Clinical Trials Unit, University of Warwick, Coventry, UK
  6. 6 Emergency Medicine, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Australia
  7. 7 Emergency Medicine, Royal Perth Hospital, Perth, Australia
  8. 8 Ambulance Victoria, Blackburn North, Victoria, Australia
  9. 9 School of Nursing and Midwifery, Curtin University, Bentley, Australia
  1. Correspondence to Dr Marine Riou; marine.riou{at}curtin.edu.au

Abstract

Introduction Emergency telephone calls placed by bystanders are crucial to the recognition of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), fast ambulance dispatch and initiation of early basic life support. Clear and efficient communication between caller and call-taker is essential to this time-critical emergency, yet few studies have investigated the impact that linguistic factors may have on the nature of the interaction and the resulting trajectory of the call. This research aims to provide a better understanding of communication factors impacting on the accuracy and timeliness of ambulance dispatch.

Methods and analysis A dataset of OHCA calls and their corresponding metadata will be analysed from an interdisciplinary perspective, combining linguistic analysis and health services research. The calls will be transcribed and coded for linguistic and interactional variables and then used to answer a series of research questions about the recognition of OHCA and the delivery of basic life-support instructions to bystanders. Linguistic analysis of calls will provide a deeper understanding of the interactional dynamics between caller and call-taker which may affect recognition and dispatch for OHCA. Findings from this research will translate into recommendations for modifications of the protocols for ambulance dispatch and provide directions for further research.

Ethics and dissemination The study has been approved by the Curtin University Human Research Ethics Committee (HR128/2013) and the St John Ambulance Western Australia Research Advisory Group. Findings will be published in peer-reviewed journals and communicated to key audiences, including ambulance dispatch professionals.

  • Health services administration & management
  • Protocols & guidelines
  • Public health
  • Qualitative research

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2017-016510

Statistics from Altmetric.com

    Request Permissions

    If you wish to reuse any or all of this article please use the link below which will take you to the Copyright Clearance Center’s RightsLink service. You will be able to get a quick price and instant permission to reuse the content in many different ways.

    View Full Text

    Footnotes

    • Contributors JF is the scientific coordinator of the study. The SJA-WA OHCA database is maintained by MI. AW contributed to the acquisition of data. The study objectives were defined by JF, PB, AW, DB, JB, GDP, PC, DMF, KS, TAW, SB, MI, KLOH and PD. The study was designed by MR, JF and SB. MR drafted the manuscript and JF, SB, TAW, KOH, JB, DMF, PC, GDP and MI reviewed and provided comments to improve the paper. All authors have read and approved the final version.

    • Funding This work has been supported by an NHMRC Partnership Project between Curtin University and St John Ambulance Western Australia (APP1076949 ‘Improving ambulance dispatch to time-critical emergencies’).

    • Competing interests JF is the Director of the Australian Resuscitation Outcomes Consortium (Aus-ROC). JF, MI and JB receive partial salary support from the NHMRC Aus-ROC Centre of Research Excellence #1029983. MR receives full salary support from the NHMRC Partnership Project #1076949. AW and DB received full salary support and JF, PB and MI received partial salary support from St John Ambulance Western Australia. Other authors have no competing interests to decline.

    • Ethics approval Curtin University Human Research Ethics Committee (HR128/2013) and SJA-WA Research Advisory Group.

    • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; externally peer reviewed.