Marjon Borgert

48 Chapter 3 to respond to these calls. 15 If health professionals would know the level of urgency of FAs, this information could be used as a rst step to assess the potential to reorganise both emergency teams to achieve greater e ciency. The aim of this study was to assess what proportion of the CAT activations in a Dutch university hospital within a 3-year period were classi ed as FAs and what percentage of these FAs were classed as urgent or less-urgent in order to nd a scope for improvement in e ciency within the emergency care. Therefore, we addressed the following research questions: 1) what proportion of the CAT activations within a 3-year period were classi ed as FAs? 2) What percentage of these FAs were classed as urgent or less-urgent at the moment the nurses activated the CAT? METHODS Ethics The study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of the Academic Medical Center of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. This study conforms to the provision of the Declaration of Helsinki in 1975 and revised in 2008. The Medical Ethics Committee waived the need for informed consent. Design and setting A retrospective studywas conducted in a university hospital inAmsterdam. All registered FAs that occurred between September 2009 and September 2012 were retrospectively analysed. Inclusion and exclusion criteria Registered CAT activations for FAs for adult patients (≥ 18 years) who collapsed in hospital, i.e. on nursing wards or interventions rooms, were included in this study. In our hospital the RRT can only be activated for patients who are admitted to the hospital and so calls from the outpatients department, emergency rooms, or public areas were excluded from analyses. No information was registered for the cancelled calls and these were excluded from analysis. Cardiac Arrest Team (CAT) In our hospital, the CAT is available 24/7 and consists of a resident, and a nurse from the cardiology department and a resident and a nurse from the anaesthesiology department. The CAT-members are formally trained and certi ed in all aspects of advanced life support and they intervene according to strict resuscitation guidelines. 8