Not only COVID-19 disease impacts ambulance emergency demands but also lockdowns and quarantines.

Background: The pandemic has impacted both patients infected by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and patients who seek emergency assistance due to other health issues. Changes in emergency demands are expected to have occurred during the pandemic, the objective of this investigation is to characterize the changes in ambulance emergency demands during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic in the Vaud State of Switzerland. The goal of this research is to identify the collateral effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on emergency demands.

Paramedics in Switzerland: A Mature Profession.

This paper describes how the profession of paramedics has evolved in Switzerland and takes the perspective of public health. Ambulance drivers play an important role in the health system, not only as a response to emergencies, but also by working in an interprofessional and interdisciplinary manner in response to other public health needs, such as home care, triage, telemedicine and interhospital transfers. This pre-hospital system is rapidly evolving and relies on the work of paramedics.

Identification of new demands regarding prehospital care based on 35,188 missions in 2018.

Background: Population ageing and increased prevalence of chronic diseases result in the emergence of new demands in prehospital care. The prehospital system is facing an increase of cases without acute threat to life (so-called "non-urgent"), which generates tension due to a higher number of admissions to emergency departments and a greater use of prehospital resources. Our aim is to understand this transition in prehospital activities and to delineate the primary missions performed by paramedics in 2018 with a focus on the population concerned, the severity of cases encountered and the typology of health issues.

A Multicenter International Randomized Controlled Manikin Study on Different Protocols of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation for Laypeople: The MANI-CPR Trial.

Background: Compression-only cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a suggested technique for laypeople facing out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA). However, it is difficult performing high-quality CPR until emergency medical services arrival with this technique. We aimed to verify whether incorporating intentional interruptions of different frequency and duration increases laypeople's CPR quality during an 8-minute scenario compared with compression-only CPR.

Protocol of a Multicenter International Randomized Controlled Manikin Study on Different Protocols of Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation for laypeople (MANI-CPR).

Introduction: Out-of-hospital cardiac arrest is one of the leading causes of death in industrialised countries. Survival depends on prompt identification of cardiac arrest and on the quality and timing of cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and defibrillation. For laypeople, there has been a growing interest on hands-only CPR, meaning continuous chest compression without interruption to perform ventilations.