G-FORCE Pilot Study: G-Forces On Retrieved ChildrEn Study (Pilot)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
G-Forces On Retrieved ChildrEn Study (Pilot)
IRAS ID
285807
Contact name
Peter Shires
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 1 days
Research summary
Throughout the UK, specialised paediatric transport services are responsible for the stabilisation and transport of critically unwell children. This involves moving children via ambulance between different hospitals to receive specialist care.
Critically unwell children often require infusions of essential, life-saving medications during episodes of transport. Previous research has demonstrated that syringe drivers used to deliver infusions of essential drugs during transport are significantly affected by changes in syringe height relative to the patient and by G-forces, the acceleration and deceleration forces that occur when an ambulance is moving. What is not known is how this might affect the stability of patients themselves during transport. The G-FORCE study aims to better understand this by answering two questions.
(1) Do G-forces experienced by being in a moving ambulance, affect the stability of patient observations – heart rate, blood pressure and oxygen saturations.
(2) Do G-forces experienced by being in a moving ambulance, affect the delivery of vasoactive drug infusions which in turn affects the stability of observations.
We aim to address this by correlating the effect of G-forces measured by an accelerometer against physiological parameters of heart rate, invasive blood pressure and oxygen saturations in vivo, during episodes of transport undertaken by the COMET retrieval service over a 12 month period. Involvement in the study will not affect the care or treatment a child receives. The level of detail of monitoring recorded will be to a greater depth than routinely documented (i.e a continuous output vs 15 minute documentation of observations), however these physiological parameters are available to the clinical team in real-time and are routinely recorded; any clinical decision will be made on the information available in real time on the patient monitor as per usual practice.
REC name
East Midlands - Nottingham 2 Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/EM/0253
Date of REC Opinion
30 Oct 2020
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion