Trauma clinician perceptions of police transport
| Theme | Exemplar quote |
| Advantages | |
| Faster than EMS | ‘The most rapid transport you are going to have… the police are on patrol, even on busy nights, they always head for gunshots whenever they hear them.’ |
| Life saving | ‘I will tell you that I personally have taken care of patients that in my mind, no doubt, would have died if the police hadn’t transported them.’ |
| Disadvantages | |
| Trauma nurses | |
| Personal safety risks | ‘There is so much risk. Guns we find in back of cop cars. They are not being searched.’ |
| Public safety risks | ‘How fast are they driving through these neighborhoods? They are going through red lights and stuff. … There has been documented accidents. The police, I do not want to undermine what they do. It is a tough scenario.’ |
| Patients’ safety risks | ‘There is a lot of adrenaline. The cops want to get this person to the ER because they know that does save lives occasionally. So, they are going extremely fast with generally a patient who is unable to protect himself.’ |
| Patient extraction from police vehicles | ‘The patients are underneath seats; they are underneath the benches in the back of the paddy wagons. I am having to jump into these cars.’ |
| Occupational hazards for police | ‘Police officers do not have the blood borne pathogen training.’ |
| Trauma surgeons | |
| Lack of notification | ‘We either have 2 to 5 minutes notification, or no notification.’ |
| Impact on trauma team response | ‘It increases the number of the people who are in the trauma bay, which also I think increases the chaos, increases the noise, decreases the team’s ability to function well together.’ |
| Inappropriate triage and transports | ‘I have never told a police officer they shouldn’t have brought a patient in because I don’t want to send the wrong message, but I have had concerns about blunt trauma patients being brought in. Those patients arguably might benefit from EMS… and just to be clear when I said that EMS cannot do a lot for the penetrating patient, neither could I, if I was there.’ |
EMS, emergency medical services.