Innovative Development of Evidence-Based, Medical Evacuation Clinical Practice Guidelines and Novel Validation of the Current Critical Care Air Transport Team Clinical Practice Guideline
Abstract
There are many variables for en route care either by aeromedical evacuation or Critical Care Air Transport Teams. One variable that can complicate provided care is the ability to maintain evidence-based clinical practice guidelines (CPGs). With the amount of research being performed and results that could change/impact care being provided, it is imperative to review relevant CPGs from the Joint Trauma System (JTS) to look for gaps specific to the en route care phase and to develop a process to collect/evaluate these findings and, if necessary, apply them to current CPGs. Our study attempted to create a review process to help minimize the potential gap between current research findings and CPGs. Our first step in the project was to develop a central website that was to serve as a communication platform, data transfer point, and voting center. The second phase was to recruit volunteer subject matter experts (SMEs) to establish keywords for literature searches, review current literature, and discuss possible recommendations through a discussion board on the website for CPG changes based on findings. If an addendum to the CPG was agreed upon by the assigned team, it would be written and voted on by a quorum of SME review teams. The third phase involved the addendum to be voted on by the owning community; if adopted, it would be posted to the U.S. Army Institute for Surgical Research/JTS site. A website was created and 33 SMEs volunteered to support the effort. One issue with the website and the volunteer SMEs was access to the website was limited due to firewalls; this required the SMEs to oftentimes access from home networks. In the end we learned a valuable lesson. While we could harness some great inputs from such a wide cast for SMEs, the downside was follow-through. As a research cell, we had no way to push for closure once projects were assigned to the volunteers. Follow-through became an increasing problem as we moved forward.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 21, 2018
- Accession Number
- AD1054288
Entities
People
- Dario Rodriquez
- Dina Gomaa
- James Lehman
- Jay Johannigman
- John Fowler
- Michael Petro
- Richard D Branson
- Thomas C Blakeman
Organizations
- United States Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine