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Table 2 Operational and medical variables, including content and completeness of each variable in Hemsfile

From: The Danish helicopter emergency medical service database: high quality data with great potential

Variable

Content

Completeness (%)

Operational

 Hems ID

Unique number for identification of the event

100

 Type of mission

Four separate report forms (patient treated and carried (RF1), patient attended to, but not carried (RF2), aborted missions (RF3), rejected missions (RF4)) and a telephone registration

100

 HEMS base

Location of HEMS unit (Skive, Billund, Ringsted)

100

Crew

 Physician

Name of physician on call

100

 Paramedic

Name of paramedic on call

98.6

 Pilot

Name of pilot on call

98.6

Dispatching region

One of the five Danish regions (Capital Region, Region of Zealand, Central Denmark Region, Northern Region, Southern Region)

100

Date

Date of event

100

Timestamps

 Time of alarm

Defined as time of dispatch

100

 Airborne

Defined as time of leaving the helipad at the base

97.6

 Arrival on-scene

Defined as time of arrival on scene

99.9

 Departure from the scene

Defined as time of helicopter take-off from the scene

99.0

 Arrival at hospital

Defined as time of arrival at hospital

85.1

Patient management

Thirteen options (presented in Table 3)

100

Destination

Receiving university or regional hospital

100a

Island

Mission to an island not connected to the mainland (yes/no)

89.1b

Reason for aborted mission

Eight options (landing impossible, cancelled by RRV staff, cancelled by EMDC staff, cancelled by ambulance staff, redirected, weather, technic or other)

99.5

Reason for rejected mission

Eight options (duty-time, no need, no time gain, landing impossible, weather, concurrency, technic or other)

99.7

Medical

 Civil registry number

Unique 10-digit personal identifier

93.6c

 NACA score

Used to assess the severity of illness/injury. Score ranges from 0 to 7

99.9

 ICD-10

Pre-hospital diagnosis based on the International

Classification of Diseases, 10th edition

99.8

Interventions

 Airway management

Three options (yes intubation by HEMS physician, yes intubation by RRV physician or no)

99.2

 Ultrasound examination

Ultrasound examination by HEMS physician (yes/no)

98.2

 Mechanical CPR (LUCAS)

Five options (yes at the scene, yes at the scene and during transfer, yes at the scene but not during transfer, yes stand-by during transfer or no)

96.2

 Intraosseous access

Intraosseous access by HEMS physician (yes/no)

97.7

 Thoracic intervention

Four options (yes thoracotomy, yes chest tube placement, yes thoracostomy or no)

95.8

 Blood products

Red blood cells or plasma administered by HEMS physician (yes/no)

98,0

  1. Abbreviations: RRV Rapid Response Vehicle, NACA score National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics score, CPR cardiopulmonary resuscitation, NA not available
  2. a Only patients carried by HEMS are included
  3. b The variable Island was added to the dataset in 2015
  4. c Per cent of valid civil registry numbers