From Emergency Call to Emergency Department Handover: Emergency Medical Dispatch Support for Burn Injury Telephone Triage, Pre-Arrival Instructions and Referral Decisions.
The Journal of emergency medicine · 2026-04-19 · Other / unclear
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Initial burn management often starts at the emergency call. Emergency medical dispatch (EMD) must identify high-risk features, initiate evidence-based first aid, and support safe referral decisions despite uncertainty in burn size and depth. STUDY OBJECTIVE: To synthesize evidence and standards relevant to dispatcher-assisted burn telephone triage, pre-arrival instructions, and destination/referral decisions, and to propose an implementable dispatch-to-emergency department (ED) framework. METHODS: We performed a structured clinical (narrative) review informed by SANRA and complemented by standards and guideline sources. The synthesis provides a core pre-arrival instruction bundle (including cooling with hypothermia safeguards), phenotype-specific add-ons (chemical, electrical, inhalation risk), conservative escalation triggers, and a minimum prenotification dataset to support ED parallel processing. CONCLUSIONS: Standardized, safety-bounded dispatcher scripts and governance across the dispatch-ED interface may reduce harmful first-aid variation, improve timely escalation and burn-center referral, and strengthen handover quality for patients with burn injuries.
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Tags
Communication & handover · Dispatchers & call takers
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