If you talk to Brent Myers, M.D., MPH, FACEP, FAEMS, for a few minutes, his interest and enthusiasm for research shines through.
Myers, ESO Chief Medical Officer, answered the annual AEDR Call for Posters by submitting the poster “Comparing Breathing Problems and Sick Person Protocols and Determinants: EMS Findings and Hospital Outcomes.”
At the NAVIGATOR Closing Session on Thursday, April 18, Matthew Miko, IAED™ Director of Academics, Research, and Communications, and Todd Stout, President of FirstWatch, announced Myers as this year’s research poster winner out of 10 submissions. The poster encapsulates a study Myers worked on with colleagues from the Johns Hopkins Department of Emergency Medicine, eight EMS agencies with IAED accredited centers, and the ESO research team; the subsequent paper has been published in Prehospital Emergency Care.
While standing in front of a room full of emergency dispatch personnel, an honored and humbled Myers briefly spoke about the poster.
“The purpose of our research was to tie not only what EMS encountered on the scene but also to what was found at the hospital,” he said. “We are pleased to have this linkage going forward, and thanks for the award.”
Later, Myers talked more about this study and the associated poster and expressed that he wanted to make sure to “show how practical good quality research can be.” Keeping that in mind, this research compared Protocol 6: Breathing Problems and Protocol 26: Sick Person (Specific Diagnosis), starting with a call to 911 for help and finishing with EMS and hospital outcomes.
And the takeaway? When working with limited resources to allocate, calls handled appropriately on Protocol 26 are less likely to have a time-critical situation and therefore safer to hold off sending resources. However, calls handled appropriately on Protocol 6 are more likely to have a time-critical situation and need resources sooner. This conclusion comes from an analysis of more than 1.7 million EMS incidents. Of those, 143,756 (8%) calls were handled on Protocol 6, and 244,425 (14%) were handled on Protocol 26.
The research poster Myers submitted was the culmination of more than a year of conversations and analysis, but it wasn’t his first project in the research realm. In 2002, he became the Medical Director of Raleigh Wake EMS in North Carolina (USA) and found that they were still responding lights-and-siren to nonemergencies. The Wake County Commissioners wanted this issue looked at, but only through the lens of research done in their own county. It was important for this to be evidence-based research rather than anecdotal evidence.
“I was worried that a citizen, paramedic, or EMT would be injured going lights-and-siren to a 26-ALPHA,” Myers said.
He started on his first research project to find a justification to stop sending all responses lights-and-siren and was able to successfully decrease its use. This became a learning journey that helped him break into the research field, which has led to Myers teaming up with other researchers and enlisting mentors during the past 20+ years. Myers has served on editorial boards of peer-reviewed journals, as the Past-President of the National Association of EMS Physicians (NAEMSP), and published more than 50 papers, among other accomplishments.
But what Myers is on a mission to do is inspire up-and-coming researchers to dive into research. Myers encourages those interested to check with their local EMS, fire, and/or police agencies as well as the IAED to find help. Dipping your toes into research doesn’t mean you need to have all the credentials or take on the bulk of the project yourself. Instead look for different avenues to get started.
“If you are appropriately open to others’ ideas then you can have a research community,” Myers said. “There are willing mentors everywhere. Don’t be afraid of it. Find a mentor.”
Myers believes in the power of mentorship to aid new researchers in building the amount of research done in the field. After all, research really matters.
“The goal is to make sure the citizens in each community get the right response when they need it,” Myers said.
