EMS Memory Research (Help Needed)

[Andy Lazar]

I am a graduate student at Cornell University currently working on a research masters degree focusing on memory and decision making in the pre-hospital setting. I have been an EMT and firefighter in New York State at multiple paid and volunteer agencies since 2006. From my experiences, pre-hospital care has been a large interest of mine and I decided to base my thesis on medical decision making in the pre-hospital (EMS) setting.

The survey takes about 15-25 minutes, it is anonymous and is internet based so it can be completed from any computer. It has a couple of medical scenarios and then a bunch of other questions regarding how you personally make decisions as a pre-hospital provider. I would really appreciate if you were able to take some time out of your busy schedule and complete the survey. The link is:

https://cornell.qual...71UB8rU2xfOgmeE

If you know of any other pre-hospital providers, please forward this email to them and see if they can complete this survey. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via email at ANL26@cornell.edu.

Andy

[Eydawn]

Is. Dr. Reyna your advisor? That's who the survey info says is conducting the study...

How will this data fit into the larger framework of your thesis? Surely, this survey isn't the only data you will be using?

Wendy

CO EMT-B

[Just Plain Ruff]

Finally someone coming here and really doing a fine job of introducing themselves and outlining what their study is for. NOt like the last person who asked and then never came back to answer our questions of what they needed the questions for. I'll go and look and probably answer.

[ERDoc]

I assume that I am not able to participate since I am no longer in the field, but I did pass it along to several people who are. I know what a pain in the ass research is, so I'm glad to help.

[DwayneEMTP]

I've completed the survey, though I'm not sure if I did much good. I have a couple of comments with though my comments should be considered in the context that when doing a Masters thesis that you're so far beyond anything that I can understand that it's like a 6 year old questioning Carl Sagan about gravitational physics....

The word 'referred' was used often in relation to protocols. I always chose 'never' (I'm being purposely vague as I'm not sure if discussion on the forums might queer your results.) with the belief that it questioned the physical act without regard to the mental, and I'm not sure if that was a correct assumption on my part.

I also often chose 'other' with an explanation such as, "A combination of a general understanding of the underlying pathology combined with memorized protocols." and am again not sure if I was staying in the spirit of the intended questions or just being an idiot.

It was really interesting to explore my decision making process. Will we be directly privy to anything interesting that you might discover through your research?

Thanks for allowing us to participate as well for the respect you've shown with your introduction and explanations.

Have a great day!

Dwayne

[BEorP]

Done. Good luck with your project!

[island emt]

Your questions seem to make me think you are promoting cookbook medicine. Nowhere did you ask if a treatment plan was based on education or knowledge. You kept going back to " do you use a cookbook to figure out how to diagnose or treat.

Believe it or not , a good prehospital practitioner does not need a cookbook to provide quality care in the field.

the last time i even cracked open a cookbook was the daylong roll out of the new protocols.

If you need to read the book to know what to do next, then maybe you should be in school and not on the street..

[DwayneEMTP]

I didn't really get the impression that anything was being promoted. I was impressed with the fact that it seemed to be trying learn what I do, and how much of the information came from a document in front of me, a general feeling of the conditions from previous patients that I've treated, or if I pulled up patients very much like the one presenting specifically.

I'm really curious about the answers, I hope most will tell the truth.

[Andy Lazar]

Thank you everyone for all your feedback regarding the survey, however I would like to clarify that I personally am not trying to promote one type of treatment thinking whether it be following protocols exactly or utilizing more of your memory to treat patients. In fact, the hope of this research is to determine what type of memory providers actually use when treating patients and if providers use memory more based on past experiences or the gist of a previous event then perhaps the data can help change the way that EMTs are taught. I completely understand that this is quite a lofty goal and I by no means think this will do that but I believe that this is the first step in learning how pre-hospital providers make medical decisions. I hope that this helps clarify and if you have any more questions please feel free to email me at ANL26@cornell.edu.

Andy

[Kiwiology]

I had a quick look but in the vast of the questions the treatment options are not appropriate and there is no "other" box so you're stuck choosing the best wrong answer which is going to screw up your statistics