Disagreement between transport team and ED staff regarding the prehospital assessment of air medically evacuated scene patients.

Study Objective: To determine the rate of disagreement in assessment of significant illness or injury between air medical transport team assessment and emergency department (ED) diagnosis in patients transferred from the scene of an incident to the ED.

Methods: Retrospective analysis was performed on 84 patients transported by medical flight teams from an accident scene to an ED.

Results: Results show transport team assessment concurred with ED diagnosis 96.7% of the time; most of the differences in assessment were overassessments by the transport team. Assessment differences occurred most often for abdominal injuries and least often for head injuries. Underassessment occurred most often for spinal cord injuries.

Conclusions: Despite the numerous difficulties involved in patient assessment, data show that the transport teams accurately evaluated patients in most instances. Disagreements in assessment of injury/illness most often were overassessments.