Teammate familiarity and risk of injury in emergency medical services

Abstract

OBJECTIVE-We investigated the association between teammate familiarity and workplace injury in the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) setting. METHODS-We abstracted a mean of 29-months of shift records and Occupational SafetyHealth Administration injury logs from 14 EMS organizations with 37 total bases located in four U.S. Census regions. Total teammate familiarity was calculated for each dyad as the total number of times a clinician dyad worked together over the study period. We used negative binomial regression to examine differences in injury incidence rate ratios (IRR) by familiarity. HHS Public AccessAuthor manuscript Emerg Med J. Author manuscript; available in PMC 2017 May 23. Author Manuscript Author ManuscriptAuthor ManuscriptAuthor Manuscript RESULTS-We analyzed 715,826 shift records, representing 4,197 EMS clinicians and 60,701 unique dyads. We determined the mean shifts per dyad was (5.9, SD 19.7), and quartiles of familiarity were 1 shift worked together over the study period, 2-3 shifts, 4-9 shifts, and ≥10 shifts worked together. More than half of all dyads worked one shift together (53.9%, n=32,739), 24.8% of dyads 2-3 shifts, 11.8% worked 4-9 shifts, and 9.6% worked ≥10 shifts. The overall incidence rate of injury across all organizations was 17.5 per 100 FTE, range 4.7 to 85.6 per 100 FTE. The raw injury rate was 33.5 per 100 FTEs for dyads with one shift of total familiarity, 14.2 for 2-3 shifts, 8.3 for 4-9 shifts, and 0.3 for ≥10 shifts. Negative binomial regression confirmed that dyads with ≥10 shifts had the lowest incidence of injury (IRR=0.03; 95%CI 0.02-0.04).CONCLUSIONS-Familiarity between teammates varies in the EMS setting, and less familiarity is associated with greater incidence of workplace injury.

Mitigating Violence Against First Responder Teams: Results and Ideas From the Hackmanathon

“…Team 1 builds upon this idea by suggesting the rotation of teams together rather than separating individual members from the team that they know. As this is consistent with groups and teams research concerning camaraderie and cohesion (Joo, Song, Lim, & Yoon, 2012; Patterson et al, 2016), this is an important addition to the sister station idea which, while being practiced in the fire service to a very rare extent, has not yet been evaluated for its impact.…”

“…Given the nature of the problem presented, it stands to reason that the science of groups and teams may be a resource for improving emergency responder safety (Williams, Rose, Simon, & Med Teams Consortium, 1999; Wilson, Burke, Priest, & Salas, 2005). Most of the research on emergency responder teams focuses on patient, rather than responder, safety (Patterson et al, 2016). In their call for more research and the use of teams in emergency medical response, Williams and colleagues (1999) focus on error reduction and improved performance with reference to patients alone.…”

Dyadic teams and nursing care: A critical incident study of nurses in the emergency medical service

“…On the other hand, a study on patient relationships in EMS found that an effective statusless team creates an atmosphere of calm for the patients they encounter (Holmberg et al, 2016) and therefore is an important aspect of nursing care. Mutual trust (Salas et al, 2005) and familiarisation (Patterson et al, 2016) are described as core preconditions for the achievement of individual responsibility within the dyadic team. In this regard.…”

“…The importance of a team functioning effectively to provide care in the EMS has been stressed earlier (Campeau, 2008;Holmberg, Wahlberg, Fagerberg, & Forslund, 2016;Hughes et al, 2017;Patterson et al, 2016;Vilke et al, 2007).…”

Workers' compensation injury claims among workers in the private ambulance services industry—Ohio, 2001–2011

“…Finally, work in this industry is commonly done in teams with an assigned partner during each shift. The assigned partner can vary, resulting in less familiarity which has been associated with greater risk of injury …”