In the palliative care community, multiple emergency department visits and hospitalizations are considered an indicator of poor-quality end of life care. There is substantial research on the events surrounding ED visits, and subsequent hospitalizatons, by hospice patients. It is important however to understand that these hospital arrivals often begin with an ambulance response to the home. Emergency medical services (EMS) responses to hospice patients have been less well-studied. We conducted a retrospective study of 170 consecutive electronic patient care reports produced contemporaneously by EMS providers in several US counties during the normal course of their responses to hospice patients. We summarized descriptive epidemiology of the patients and of the incidents, and we explored the provider narratives for recurring themes. To our knowledge this is the first study to explore the contemporaneously-documented on-scene circumstances of pre-hospital care for patients enrolled in a hospice program.

中文翻译：

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EMS对临终关怀患者的反应：一项定性研究

在姑息治疗界，多次急诊就诊和住院被认为是临终关怀质量低下的一个指标。对临终关怀患者就诊和随后住院的事件进行了大量研究。然而，重要的是要了解，这些医院的到来通常始于救护车对家的响应。对临终关怀患者的紧急医疗服务 (EMS) 响应研究较少。我们对美国几个县的 EMS 提供者在对临终关怀患者的正常反应过程中同时生成的 170 份连续电子患者护理报告进行了回顾性研究。我们总结了患者和事件的描述性流行病学，并探讨了重复主题的提供者叙述。