Saving the On-Scene Time for Out-of-Hospital Cardiac Arrest Patients: The Registered Nurses' Role and Performance in Emergency Medical Service Teams

For out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) patients, every second is vital for their life. Shortening the prehospital time is a challenge to emergency medical service (EMS) experts. This study focuses on the on-scene time evaluation of the registered nurses (RNs) participating in already existing EMS teams, in order to explore their role and performance in different EMS cases. In total, 1247 cases were separated into trauma and nontrauma cases. The nontrauma cases were subcategorized into OHCA (NT-O), critical (NT-C), and noncritical (NT-NC) cases, whereas the trauma cases were subcategorized into collar-and-spinal board fixation (T-CS), fracture fixation (T-F), and general trauma (T-G) cases. The average on-scene time of RN-attended cases showed a decrease of 21.05% in NT-O, 3.28% in NT-C, 0% in NT-NC, 18.44% in T-CS, 13.56% in T-F, and 3.46% in T-G compared to non-RN-attended. In NT-O and T-CS cases, the RNs' attendance can notably save the on-scene time with a statistical significance (P=.016 and .017, resp.). Furthermore, the return of spontaneous circulation within two hours (ROSC2h) rate in the NT-O cases was increased by 12.86%. Based on the findings, the role of RNs in the EMTs could save the golden time in the prehospital medical care in Taiwan.