International symposium on emergency medicine

2 Material and Methods
The study contained two parts. The first was a thorough search of the literature; the second was a
survey of Slovenian EMS providers to provide basic information about how things are done now and
what is the prevailing level of knowledge about this issue.
2.1 Ambulance transport of an infectious patient in Slovenia 
The survey of Slovenian EMS providers was intended to provide basic information about how the
contagious patient is transported in Slovenia. Questions included some information about
participants’ years of experience in EMS, and how often they transported an infectious patient. The
central part of the survey was intended to obtain information about how this kind of transport is
approached and if any special procedures are agreed. The final part of the survey asked for information
about the personal opinions of the respondents about their knowledge on the subject. 
2.2 Literature Search
A literature search of the following databases was undertaken in April 2010, using the EbscoHost
interface: CINAHL with full text, Medline, Academic search premiere. The search terms covered:
ambulance transport of the contagious patient, contagion of EMS personnel and nurses, the treatment
of contagious patient related to transport or transfer to other institutions, and related protocols. The
search terms were used alone and in combination, and included both “communicable” and “infectious”
as synonyms. Limitations were specified as full-text articles published within the past 10 years: this
time limit was decided because of the recent emergence of different “new” contagious diseases and
types of influenza.
This initial search using the combination of words listed above yielded limited results (n=94).
Analysis of these articles and further refinement of the search terms to:
- Infection control AND EMS / ambulance 
Infection control principles OR protocols AND EMS OR ambulance
Yielded eleven results. 
The key terms were searched again using the “Meta web search engine” Dogpile.com. This search
had two aims: firstly to find any existing protocols already in use by EMS which were published on their
web pages or on major main institutions’ sites; and secondly to check if any article was published on
the internet on some free journals or other sites that are not included in the above-mentioned
databases. This search yielded useful items that were later considered as reference.
A final research was made of sites that give access to guidelines. The keywords used were:
ambulance AND infectious OR contagious. The Guidelines International Network (http://www.g-i-
n.net/) gave no useful result. From the results given by the sites of the Health Protection Agency
(www.evidence.nhs.uk) and National guidelines Clearing House (www.guideline.gov) 1 result was
chosen from each site. The Guidelines Finder of the Health Information Resources
(http://www.library.nhs.uk/GuidelinesFinder/) gave 3 useful results of protocols that were cited.