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First responder communication in CBRN environments: FIRCOM-CBRN study
Jan Schumacher1,2, James Arlidge1, Declan Dudley1
1Anaesthetics, Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK.
Introduction:
Recent terror attacks and assassinations involving highly toxic chemical weapons have stressed the importance of sufficient respiratory protection of medical first responders and receivers. As full-face respirators cause perceptual-motor impairment, they not only impair vision but also significantly reduce speech intelligibility. The recent introduction of electronic voice projection units (VPUs), attached to a respirator, may improve communication while wearing personal respiratory protection.
Objective:
To determine the influence of currently used respirators and VPUs on medical communication and speech intelligibility.
Methods:
37 trauma anaesthetists carried out an evaluation exercise of six different respirators and VPUs including one control. Participants had to listen to audio clips of a variety of sentences dealing with scenarios of emergency triage and medical history taking.
Results:
In the questionnaire, operators stated that speech intelligibility of the Avon C50 respirator scored the highest (mean 3.9, ±SD 1.0) and that the Respirex Powered Respiratory Protective Suit (PRPS) NHS-suit scored lowest (1.6, 0.9). Regarding loudness the C50 plus the Avon VPU scored highest (4.1, 0.7), followed by the Draeger FPS-7000-com-plus (3.4, 1.0) and the Respirex PRPS NHS-suit scored lowest (2.3, 0.8).
Conclusions:
We found that the Avon C50 is the preferred model among the tested respirators. In our model, electronic voice projection modules improved loudness but not speech intelligibility. The Respirex PRPS NHS-suit was rated significantly less favourably in respect of medical communication and speech intelligibility.
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