Do anaesthesiologists in pre-hospital care need concomitant clinical practice?

Abstract

Background Previous studies have documented that advanced life support (ALS) provided by anaesthesiologists in emergency medical service (EMS) leads to life years gained [1]. Especially interventions legally and formally related to anaesthesiology were judged as crucial: endotracheal intubation (ETI), chest tube insertion and anaesthesia induction. These interventions require extensive training and experience, and probably retraining and regular practice, to be performed safely. The need for retraining and practice is probably related to actual exposure to these interventions in clinical practice. To explore if there is a need for retraining and practice, we have investigated how often these interventions are performed by individual anaesthesiologists in a typical Norwegian physician manned EMS.