A pilot of a UK Emergency Medical Team (EMT) medical record during a deployment training course

Introduction Improving medical record keeping is a key part of the World Health Organization's (WHO's; Geneva, Switzerland) drive to standardize and evaluate emergency medical team (EMT) response to sudden onset disasters (SODs).Problem In response to the WHO initiative, the UK EMT is redeveloping its medical record template in line with the WHO minimum dataset (MDS) for daily reporting. When changing a medical record, it is important to understand how well it functions before it is implemented.Methods The redeveloped medical record was piloted at a UK EMT deployment course using simulated patients in order to examine ease of use by practitioners, and rates of data capture for key MDS variables.Results Some parts of the form were consistently poorly filled in, and the way in which the form was completed suggested that the flow of the form did not align with the recorder's natural thought processes when under pressure.Conclusion: Piloting of a single-sheet triplicate medical record during an EMT deployment simulation led to significant modifications to improve data capture and function.