From Emergency Call to Emergency Department Handover: Emergency Medical Dispatch Support for Burn Injury Telephone Triage, Pre-Arrival Instructions and Referral Decisions.

BACKGROUND

Initial burn management often starts at the emergency call. Emergency medical dispatch (EMD) must identify high-risk features, initiate evidence-based first aid, and support safe referral decisions despite uncertainty in burn size and depth.

STUDY

OBJECTIVE

To synthesize evidence and standards relevant to dispatcher-assisted burn telephone triage, pre-arrival instructions, and destination/referral decisions, and to propose an implementable dispatch-to-emergency department (ED) framework.

METHODS

We performed a structured clinical (narrative) review informed by SANRA and complemented by standards and guideline sources. The synthesis provides a core pre-arrival instruction bundle (including cooling with hypothermia safeguards), phenotype-specific add-ons (chemical, electrical, inhalation risk), conservative escalation triggers, and a minimum prenotification dataset to support ED parallel processing.

CONCLUSIONS

Standardized, safety-bounded dispatcher scripts and governance across the dispatch-ED interface may reduce harmful first-aid variation, improve timely escalation and burn-center referral, and strengthen handover quality for patients with burn injuries.