Physician Administered Antibiotics in a Prehospital Mobile Emergency Care Unit

In Denmark, the Emergency Medical System (EMS) consists of not only ambulances operated by paramedics and emergency technicians (EMTs) but also of Mobile Emergency Care Unit (MECU) staffed with an emergency physician with specialist training in anesthesiology and a paramedic. Only the physician on the MECU can administer prehospital antibiotics in Denmark; this emphasizes the importance of the first responding emergency units' capability in detecting and realizing the need for antibiotics in a patient so that the MECU can be requested and treatment initiated quickly.

Determining the administration of antibiotics is done at the anesthesiologists' discretion.

The purpose of administering antibiotics prehospitally is to reduce the time gap between suspicion of sepsis arises and the administration of antibiotics.

The purpose of this retrospective study is to conduct a quality control of the obtaining of blood cultures and of the administration of antibiotics in the prehospital setting serviced by the MECU in Odense in the Region of Southern Denmark in a time interval of 5 years (November 2013- October 2018).

The primary purpose is to associate the prehospital tentative diagnosis (assigned by the MECU) with the final diagnosis (ICD10 from hospital charts) including: 1: An indication for antibiotic therapy and 2: An assessment of the feasibility and potential benefit of the blood cultures obtained. 3: A description of the bacteria found in the blood cultures.