Creative Research Approaches For Complex Questions In Pre-Hospital Emergency Medicine

Pre-Hospital Emergency Medical Service work environments are complex, presenting unique challenges for the design of environments and equipment, digital technologies, and inter-organizational operational strategies. As researchers, our challenge is to understand how providers operate in these complex environments, especially during emergency situations, to ensure solutions to these challenges are well informed by representative evidence. This requires collecting data regarding human-system interactions occurring between many people with shifting roles, in dynamic and potentially dangerous environments, with complex patients and often acute time constraints. A lot is happening simultaneously, and our ability to learn and provide meaningful insights is challenged. In search for methods that will help us asses these situations we often use mixed methods that are adapted to the unique and changing conditions of each study. The goal of this session was to present Case Studies and methods used for the panelist’s research involving the emergency medical services work environment. We took a close look at the tools and methods employed by the panelists for their research, and learned about the benefits and limitations of their unique approaches, as they were implemented in unique contexts.