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Airway & ventilation
Prehospital RSI: what makes it hard
Experiences of emergency care practitioners on pre-hospital rapid sequence intubation in South Africa
Health SA = SA Gesondheid · 2026-09-29 · Added 7 October 2026
Qualitative focus-group study of 39 South African emergency care practitioners found pre-hospital RSI is hampered by system-driven administrative demands, resource and workforce constraints, and communication gaps affecting clinical decision-making.
- Study type
- Qualitative
- Design
- Descriptive qualitative (six focus groups)
- Participants
- 39 emergency care practitioners
- Main finding
- Three themes: system-driven administrative demands and procedural complexity, resource and workforce constraints, and communication-related challenges and information gaps affecting clinical decision-making
- Caveat
- Single-country qualitative study — experiences may not generalise to better-resourced systems
- Bottom line
- Context only
Why it matters in Australia (Medium relevance). Drug-assisted intubation is an intensive care paramedic skill in most Australian services, and the human-factors themes are recognisable everywhere, but the resource-constrained South African setting limits direct comparison.
Learning goal
Understand how system demands, resource limits and communication gaps shape safe delivery of prehospital RSI in Australian practice.
More
- Topic: Airway & ventilation
- Daily scan: 7 October 2026
- Podcast: Paramedic Papers Daily, 7 October 2026
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