Physicians in charge of medical regulation within French SAMU have to take difficult decisions regarding patient's orientation (in or out-of hospital care) but suffer from lack of information. Such information usually consist in a simple phone conversation without any visual information. Visual assesment of the situation would be of great help, especially for traumatized patients. Private Ambulance societies all over territory in charge of SAMU 86 now work with teletransmission devices allowing photography transmission. The objective of the study is to determine if routine use of teletransmitted photography help SAMU 86's physians for a better orientation of non-severe traumatized patients, especially by avoiding unnecessary transportations to Emergency Departments.
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
DIAGNOSTIC
Masking
SINGLE
Enrollment
179
A photography of the trauma is teletransmitted to SAMU's physician
Usual management without photography teletransmission
CHU Poitiers
Poitiers, Aquitaine, France
Impact of Photography on patient orientation
Number of patient dispatched anywhere else than the local hospital after ambulance assesement. Either the patient was dispatched to a higher level hospital (i.e. if the local hospital doesn't provide surgical facility when the patient needs it) or he was leaved at home and oriented to a general practitioner.
Time frame: 1 - 2 hours
Undertriage
To evaluate the number of patients initially oriented to out-of hospital care that needed to go to emergency department during following days
Time frame: 10 days
Overtriage
To evaluate the number of patients initially oriented to in-hospital care when it wasn't necessary
Time frame: 10 days
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