Like so many other technological advancements, it’s easy to take for granted the decades of work and the tens of thousands of hours of blood, sweat, and tears to take the Medical Priority Dispatch System™ (MPDS®) from an idea to the most advanced, most tested, most researched, and most trusted protocol system in the world. When you see the ease and precision with which today’s EMDs navigate the protocols using ProQA® Paramount, it’s hard to imagine a time when manual cardsets, housed in oversized trays, were the norm. That is true evolution.
Still, as much as things can and do change, others—the fundamental, essential concepts—remain the same. One thing that hasn’t changed is the intentionality behind the structural choices found throughout the protocols. The meaning extends far beyond the words on the page (or to be more precise, the screen), with each design decision purposely made to quickly convey pertinent information and enable the EMD to make critical assessments with amazing accuracy, all within the non-visual environment that is emergency dispatch. Even for Protocol 41: Caller in Crisis (1st Party Only), a truly first-of-its-kind protocol to help Emergency Dispatchers manage callers threatening suicide or who have suicidal ideation, the underlying framework remains true to the same conventions (i.e., The Attributes) underlying the entire protocols.
Now, while evolution is ordinarily a slow but effective process, sometimes evolutionary change comes quickly. With the release of the new Advanced MPDS in 1990, the evolutionary change came in droves, not drops. With over 40 updates, revisions, and enhancements, the new Advanced MPDS then marked a major milestone in the development of the protocols. Here are just a few:
• The PAIs were redesigned to focus on behavioral events, with each behavior getting its own panel, operative question, and instructions telling the EMD where to go next.
• Rules, Axioms, and Laws were included on each Additional Information Card so EMDs could easily find and review important DLS concepts (in sight, in mind).
• Key Questions were listed in hierarchal order of importance and medical severity, and the PDIs were similarly ordered to account for scene safety, patient care, and special information links.
Finally, if you want to learn more about the design decisions that drive the MPDS, you’re curious in seeing how we got from “then” to “now,” or you merely want to impress your colleagues by using the term “font specificity” at the next staff meeting, check out this 1990 article written by the late Scott Hauert, the Director of Training for the then National Academy of Emergency Medical Dispatch®.
