Developing an Emergency Medical Services Research Reading List for Emergency Medical Services Practitioners

High-impact primary research is a cornerstone of emergency medical services (EMS) education and protocol development, yet EMS practitioners and EMS leaders often lack a clear, prioritized way to identify the most important recent primary literature. Because formal evidence-based guideline (EBG) development frequently lags behind emerging evidence, curated primary research plays a critical role in translating science into practice. Therefore, we sought to identify and evaluate recent high-impact EMS research-related publications through recommendations and ratings from key stakeholders and experts in EMS to identify a priority research reading list in EMS medicine.

We issued an open call through member organizations of the Prehospital Guidelines Consortium for high-impact primary literature (excluding EBGs) published between 2021-2023 related to EMS clinical care and operations. An expert panel, selected from the Prehospital Guidelines Consortium and member organizations, reviewed submissions, rating each by importance (1-5, with 5 being most important) in an asynchronous electronic survey. The expert panel selected a cutoff point using average importance rating to generate the final priority reading list.

A total of 29 submissions resulted from the public call. After submissions outside the date range, duplicate submissions, and prehospital EBGs were excluded, nine experts in EMS medicine rated 22 submissions. The average importance rating of submissions ranged from 1.56 to 4.56. There was a natural inflection point in average importance scores at 3.56, and we classified the 10 primary articles at or above this threshold as being highly rated.

We identified 10 high-impact primary publications to prioritize for inclusion in initial and ongoing EMS education to inform evidenced-based out-of-hospital care and address gaps in existing prehospital EBGs.