Do health care professionals report sudden cardiac arrest better than laymen?

To compare the emergency calls made by health care providers and by laymen reporting a non-traumatic cardiac arrest, and to evaluate the handling of these calls by dispatchers.

The study was conducted prospectively over a 1-year period in 1996. The callers (N=328) where divided in to three groups based on profession: I, doctors and nurses (N=33); II, other health care providers (N=19); and III, laymen (N=276). Main outcome measures where the information given by the caller, use of the dispatching protocol, recognition of the cardiac arrest, and survival to hospital.

Doctors and nurses told the dispatcher spontaneously what had happened in 67% of the calls when total strangers to the patient told it in 72%. Group I gave no information about the vital signs in 24% of the calls, group II in 0% and group III in 6%. Of the 52 phone calls made by groups I and II, in six cases the patient was not in cardiac arrest, in four the patient had already irreversible signs of death and in four only transportation to another hospital was requested for a patient in cardiac arrest. Of the professionals calling, 49 (94%) were on duty at the time of the call. The cardiac arrest was recognized by the dispatcher in group I in 70%, in group II in 74% and in group III in 73%. There where no statistical differences between the groups.

Our data do suggest that health care professionals, excluding those in emergency medicine, are not better than laymen in evaluating an emergency situation correctly, and when the caller is a doctor or a nurse the dispatcher seems to trust the evaluation of the situation to be correct and rarely asks any clarifying questions about vital signs of the patient.