Global Treatment Protocol Course via Advanced

The National Institute of Medicine reported in 1999 that an estimated 44,000 to 98,000 deaths occur each year within the United States because of preventable medical errors resulting in $29 billion in additional health care burdens. These errors can betraced to human factors despite the best intentions of medical personnel. The types of errors cover a broad range from medication errors, incorrect procedures, equipment misuse, to poor record keeping. They include all personnel involved in patient care.Within the military, medical personnel at all echelons lack formal protocol training for assessing patients and reporting patient conditions to physicians that would allow the latter to make the best possible patient diagnosis and direct the medicalpersonnel to provide the most correct initial treatment until the patient can be transported to a medical facility. The focus of this program is to continue the work begun in Phase I to develop standardized first responder protocols for military andcivilian use and to develop a web-based Global Treatment Protocol Course via Advanced Distributive Learning (ADL) with embedded job aids that is accessible by military and civilian emergency medical personnel world wide via PC and palmtop computer.Patients will benefit most from this effort because of standardized protocols which lead to better and more effective communications between first responders, their colleagues, and physicians. The military services will benefit because fewer medicalerrors will be made that lead to unnecessary loss of personnel, corresponding warfighting capability, and the associated monetary costs. The civilian medical community will benefit because it will be able to take advantage of the work accomplished for themilitary and adapt it for use at little extra cost. Emergency medical personnel, military and civilian, will benefit because the standardized protocols will enable them to do a better job, and the web-based ADL Global Treatment Protocol Course will allowthem to access timely training and valuable job aids easily and quickly using PC and palmtop computer technology. Reduced errors will also reduce costs for everyone.