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Paediatric care coordinators linked to fewer EMS errors
Pediatric Clinical Interventions and Adverse Safety Events Among Emergency Medical Services Encounters in Agencies With and Without a Pediatric Emergency Care Coordinator: An Observational Study
Prehospital Emergency Care · 2026-10-21 · Added 23 October 2026
A US cross-sectional study of 2,219 paediatric EMS encounters found agencies with a paediatric emergency care coordinator delivered more procedures and medications, with fewer and less severe adverse safety events.
- Study type
- Cross-sectional
- Design
- Cross-sectional chart review
- Participants
- 2,219 paediatric encounters across 15 EMS agencies, 2019–2023
- Main finding
- Coordinator agencies performed more procedures (55.4% vs 26.8%) and gave more medications (23.4% vs 7.7%); procedure adverse safety event rates were 13.7% vs 20.0%, with lower assigned harm severity
- Caveat
- Cross-sectional design — agencies that adopt a coordinator may differ systematically from those that don't, and adverse events came from chart review
- Bottom line
- Hypothesis-generating
Why it matters in Australia (Medium relevance). No Australian service runs a dedicated paediatric EMS coordinator role, but the safety gap it targets — missed procedures and medication errors in children — is the same everywhere.
Learning goal
Understand how paediatric care coordination roles within agencies influence the safety of prehospital interventions.
More
- Topic: Paediatrics
- Daily scan: 23 October 2026
- Podcast: Paramedic Papers Daily, 23 October 2026
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