Background: Since 2010, the European Resuscitation Council’s (ERC) guidelines recommend hospitals to implement rapid response team composed of experienced physicians from intensive care medicine or anaesthesia and nurses with intensive care medicine experience (1). These teams are either a dedicated cardiopulmonary resuscitation-team (CPR-team) or medical emergency team (MET). The study aim was to investigate the difference of the involved specialties of the staff between MET and CPR-team in in Austria.
Material and methods: With ethics committee approval and informed consent, all 181 acute hospitals in Austria were contacted in 2021. This cross-sectional survey asked 92 questions (e. g. personnel composition of the emergency teams) via an online questionnaire. The hospitals were reminded three times within eight months. A Students t-tests compared MET and CPR-team and a p < 0.05 was considered as significant.
Results: Out of 181 acute hospitals 115 (63,5%) answered the questionnaire. Most frequently anesthesiologist were represented (82.6 %) in emergency teams. Specialist in internal medicine were represented in 61.7% and significantly more often in CPR-team (68.8%) than in MET (47.4%, p=0.026). The same was found for physicians in training CPR-team (41.6%) and MET (21.1%, p=0.030).No difference was found between MET and CPR-team for nurses. Nurses from intensive care unit (ICU) were present in 71.3%, from anaesthesia in 58.3%, and form wards in 37.4% of emergency teams.
Conclusion: The composition of hospital emergency team stuff in Austria differs slightly between MET and CPR-team, and meets the requirements of the ERC and is comparable to international studies.
1. Deakin CD, Nolan JP, Soar J, Sunde K, Koster RW, Smith GB, u. a. European Resuscitation Council Guidelines for Resuscitation 2010 Section 4. Adult advanced life support. Resuscitation. Oktober 2010;81(10):1305–52.

Composition of intra-hospital emergency teams’ personnel: a comparison of Medical Emergency Teams and Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Teams in Austria

Implementation of the Guidelines - How do we put the new ERC Guidelines into practice?

On 16 and 17 June, we are organising our first-ever hybrid congress. You will be able to join us live at the beautiful conference venue in Antwerp, Belgium and present your Poster. 

We are happy to welcome you to Resuscitation 2022!