Philly Police now transport 2 of every 3 gunshot victims to hospital
A new study shows that Philadelphia Police transport two of every three gunshot or stabbing victims to area trauma centers, helping ensure exceptional survival rates.
As violence in Philadelphia continues at a high rate, “scoop-and-run” hospital transports—when a responding police officer takes a gunshot or stabbing victim to a trauma center as quickly as possible—have become a time-tested means for delivering patients to life-saving treatment. Twice as many patients are now brought to trauma centers by police, with survival rates comparable to those transported by EMS professionals, according to a new study from researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine who examined five years of data. These findings are published in JAMA Network Open.
“We saw that patients transported by police are often more seriously injured than patients transported by EMS, but after controlling for significant differences between groups, police-transported patients have similar mortality levels,” says the study’s lead author, Jeremy Cannon,the Trauma medical director and section chief of Trauma at Penn Medicine. “This study highlights just how crucial to patient care police have become.”
While most police officers’ roles are typically limited to keeping the peace and solving crime, for approximately 25 years, the Philadelphia Police Department has authorized its officers to quickly transport trauma victims to a trauma center if they feel the situation is dire. A Penn Medicine analysis of data from more than a decade ago found no significant differences between the survival of those with penetrating trauma (gunshots, stab wounds, etc.) who were transported via police or ambulance.
But that study took place before a key change was made to the department’s protocol.
“Since the last study, all patrol officers in the city of Philadelphia were issued tourniquets to control extremity hemorrhage during emergencies,” says the study’s first author, Eric Winter, a medical student at the Perelman School of Medicine. “By giving police officers the ability to quickly manage peripheral bleeding, this tourniquet initiative had the potential to enhance the benefit of rapid police transport to the hospital. We know that Philadelphia’s EMS personnel do an exceptional job, but since there’s an emphasis on having the first available responder move victims as quickly as possible, we felt further analysis was needed to assess the impact of this new policy.”
Griffin Pitt, right, works with two other student researchers to test the conductivity, total dissolved solids, salinity, and temperature of water below a sand dam in Kenya.
Griffin Pitt’s upbringing made her passionate about water access and pollution, and Penn has given her the opportunity to explore these issues back home in North Carolina and abroad.
Helping robots work together to explore the Moon and Mars
Penn Engineers, NASA, and five other universities tested robotic systems designed to help unmanned explorers cooperate in the dunes of White Sands, New Mexico, paving the way for Moon and Mars exploration.
From framework to actions: Provost John L. Jackson Jr. talks Penn Forward
In a Q&A, Provost John L. Jackson Jr. explains the relationship between the strategic framework In Principle and Practice and Penn Forward—a new University-wide process and action plan that will advance Penn forward for the next decade and beyond.
