43 Time delay to contact the medical dispatch - eurocall study in romania

Aim

To assess the time to connect the telephone call to emergency medical dispatch.

Methods

Regional randomised study as a part of a prospective, multicenter study was conducted in April 2013 within the Medical Dispatch, Iasi, Romania. The distribution of the 112 calls followed a diurnal distribution using a computer generated sets of random numbers. We analysed the time to contact medical dispatch and its components (Time to first beep, First beep to 112 operator answer,First beep to medical dispatch answer).

Results

There were planned to do 180 calls (6 calls/24 hour) and we performed only 129 calls (71,66%). The average "Time to first beep" was 3.515±3.447 s, "First beep to 112 operator answer" was 6.823±5.559 s and "First beep to medical dispatch answer" was 24.259±19.584 s. No statistically significant difference in terms of response time when using mobile or landline phone. We found an negative correlation between "First beep to medical dispatch answer" and the hour of calls (p<0,05); thus, the average time of this interval between 00.00–06.00 hour was of 41.724±36 105 s.

Conclusion

There is a great variation regarding the time to contact the medical dispatcher, mainly during the night. This could be an additional time with negative influence for out of hospital cardiac arrest outcomes.

Reference

Nikolaou N, Castrén M, Monsieurs KG, Cimpoesu D, Georgiou M, Raffay V, Koster R, Hunyadi-Anticevi S, Truhlár A, Bossaert L, The EUROCALL investigators. Time delays to reach dispatch centres in different regions in Europe. Are we losing the window of opportunity? — The EUROCALL study. Resuscitation 2017;111:8–13.

Conflict of interest

None declared.

Funding

None declared.

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