Use of a limited lights and siren protocol in the prehospital setting vs standard usage

Objective: Our objective was to determine if implementing a standard lights and sirens (L&S) protocol would reduce their use and if this had any effect on patient disposition.

Methods: In a prospective cohort study, we trained emergency medical services (EMS) personnel from 4 towns in an L&S protocol and enrolled control personnel from 4 addition towns that were not using the protocol. We compare the use of L&S between them over a 6-month period. Our protocol restricted the usage of L&S to patients who had maladies requiring expedited transport. Emergency medical services personnel from the control towns had no such restrictions and were not aware that we were tracking their usage of L&S. We also considered if patient disposition was affected by the judicious usage of L&S.

Results: Prehospital EMS personnel who were trained in an L&S protocol were 5.6 times less likely to use L&S when compared with those not trained. Of the 808 patients transported by both types of workers, no difference in patient disposition was observed.

Conclusions: Our protocol significantly reduced the use of L&S. Judicious use of L&S has significant implications for transport safety. By allowing for selective transport with L&S usage, we observed no impact in patient disposition.