What do EMS and hospital care teams have in common with NASCAR drivers?

Quite a bit, as it turns out. The success or failure of both hinges on one thing: time. 

It might surprise even dedicated fans to learn that all of the cars on the track are limited to the same top speed and horsepower range. With this being the case, how can it be that there is such a large disparity between first and last place?

The answer: The race is won and lost during the pit stop.

Every year, millions of people around the world die from sepsis. The CDC estimates that at least 1.7 million adults in America develop sepsis every year, and that 1 in 3 people who die in hospitals have sepsis.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following content originally appeared on EMS1.com. Special thanks to our guest author, Tim Nowak for EMS1 BrandFocus. Tim is the founder and CEO of Emergency Medical Solutions LLC, an independent EMS training and consulting company that he developed in 2010. He's been involved in EMS and emergency services since 2002 and has worked as an EMT, paramedic and critical care paramedic in a variety of urban, suburban, rural and hospital settings. He’s also been involved as an EMS educator, consultant, item writer, clinical preceptor, board member, reference product developer, firefighter and hazmat technician throughout his career.

When the concept for EMS was born nearly 50 years ago, it was meant to be an integrated part of a smooth system of care beginning with the call to EMS dispatch and continuing through to definitive treatment. However, EMS-to-hospital communications have faced significant barriers including miscommunications due to archaic and unreliable technologies, issues transmitting ECGs and other patient data, inadequate training in STEMI recognition, and lack of access to patient outcome information for EMS. According to an article published in JEMS this week, recent studies have shown that prehospital notification by EMS improves time to treatment for stroke, however these notifications are not part of a consistent and standardized protocol, and in 25% of cases, EMS fails to alert the hospital of an incoming stroke patient.

When it comes to communication in healthcare, do you ever feel like you're playing a game of "telephone?"

One of the most challenging aspects of living in the technological age is the speed of change. There was once a day when the person armed with the most knowledge and information had the upper hand. That's not the case in today's world. Instead, the person or company that can rapidly learn and adjust to changing trends, information, and technology will now lead the pack. Your ability to adapt to a rapidly changing world will be the one skill that separates you from your competition.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following content originally appeared on EMS1.com as paid content sponsored by Pulsara. Special thanks to our guest blogger, Drew Rinella for EMS1 BrandFocus.

--

Lactate may be used to identify a common killer in the prehospital environment.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC), one million cases of sepsis occur in the US each year, with 258,000 Americans succumbing annually to this life-threatening systemic inflammatory response to infection. Early recognition is crucial to the recovery of the sepsis patient, and lactate plays an important role in the diagnosis of this killer. Here are ten things you need to know about using lactate to identify sepsis:

Just for grins and giggles, I signed in to Netflix recently and watched a few episodes of the medical drama from the 70's, "Emergency!" I'm a little young to remember the show when it was on the air, but when I started in EMS, my paramedic partner insisted that I watch some of it. It was a rite of passage. Of course, there was also Bringing Out the Dead starring Nicholas Cage and Mother, Jugs & Speed with Bill Cosby, but those are for another post.

Geographic Information System (GIS) software has long been employed by public health agencies to assess the health of populations in various locations. But now, healthcare providers are starting to turn to GIS too, in efforts to better identify health risk based on location; as a recent article on the subject points out, there is a strong relationship between people's health and the particular communities they live in. 

Defining Sepsis and Septic shock has been a hot topic since 1991, when the first definitions and clinical criteria for these conditions were published. After Emmanuel Rivers published “Early Goal-Directed Therapy in the Treatment of Severe Sepsis and Septic Shock” in 2001, the Surviving Sepsis campaign kicked off, significantly increasing awareness of Sepsis.

It's almost Christmas, and we at Pulsara hope you're having a wonderful holiday season! To get all of you healthcare professionals in the spirit, we thought we would share another fabulous parody video by ZDoggMD. A few months ago, we posted another video by the physician, and talked a bit about his mission and his new vision for healthcare. If you missed it, check out that post here. 

In ZDoggMD's latest video, "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Sepsis," he croons that "It's beginning to look just like malpractice, when you miss the signs..." We care about you and your patients, and don't want you to miss the signs. So enjoy ZDoggMD's fun, holiday-spirited Sepsis video and then review those symptoms below!

EDITOR'S NOTE: Special thanks to our guest blogger, Bob Sullivan. Bob Sullivan, MS, NRP, is a paramedic instructor at Delaware Technical Community College. He has been in EMS since 1999, and has worked as a paramedic in private, fire-based, volunteer, and municipal EMS services, and is an ally to Pulsara. 

Sepsis is the third leading cause of death in the United States [1], and survival depends on early recognition and treatment. Here are 10 things you need to know about sepsis to save lives: 

1. Sepsis is an overreaction to infection that can progress to shock.

Sepsis is a body-wide inflammatory response to infection that injures tissues and organs. Harm from this immune response is often worse than damage from the actual infection. Sepsis can be triggered by relatively minor infections, and can continue after the invading microbes are neutralized.

Sepsis causes blood clots to form in the microvasculature, which inhibits oxygen delivery and causes vital organs to fail. Severe sepsis also causes systemic vasodilation and increased capillary permeability, which causes hypotension and fluid leakage out of the vascular space. This causes septic shock, which further inhibits perfusion to vital organs. Forty percent of patients diagnosed with severe sepsis die.[1]