Welche Notfallbilder stellen den Einsatzalltag von Notfallsanitäter:innen dar? Eine Sekundärdatenanalyse von Krankenhauszuweisungscodes aus Hessen

The discussion about the further development of the job profile for emergency paramedics is heated and emotional. However, the current situation must first be analysed before the future can be meaningfully discussed. This paper aims to describe the range of activities of German paramedics in terms of indications and characteristics.

The analysis is based on hospital referral codes (RMI) from the ambulance services of seven districts in Hesse (Germany) for 2022. This means that the calls of a service area of almost 1.5 million inhabitants are recorded. These referral codes are processed and summarised in a detailed descriptive manner.

A total of 185,780 calls are categorised into 211 RMIs, which result in 22 referral diagnosis groups (ZDG). Based on these data, the average ambulance patient is 60.4 years old (standard deviation 25.8). In approximately 8.1% of paramedic deployments, the patients are younger than 18 years. The most frequent assignments of emergency paramedics come from the ZDG “trauma” at 20.8% (n = 38,541), followed by “internal general” at 15.6% (n = 28,920). German paramedics carry out 7.0% (n = 12,988) of operations in the area of “carry support and patient transport”, while 91.8% (n = 10,368) of patients in the ZDG “other emergency situations” are not transported to a hospital.

This exploratory study is the first to provide an overview of German emergency paramedics’ deployment indications and characteristics—and thus of the entire ambulance service. Despite the purely descriptive analysis, there are signs of potential for optimisation. For example, reducing the number of emergency physicians on cardiological calls or patient transports can help use valuable resources more efficiently.