Objective: To identify criteria for measuring the eligibility of patients with end-stage noncancer diseases for palliative care services in Australian residential aged care facilities.

Methods: No validated set if guidelines were available so five instruments were used: an adaptation of the American National Hospice Association Guidelines; a recent adaptation of the Karnofsky Performance Scale; the Modified Barthel Index; the Abbey Pain Score for assessment of people who are nonverbal and a Verbal Descriptor Scale, also for pain measurement. In addition, nutritional status and the presence of other problematic symptoms and their severity were also sought.

Results: The adapted American National Hospice Association Guidelines provided an initial indicative framework and the other instruments were useful in providing confirmatory data for service eligibility and delivery.

Emergency Medical Services (EMS) researchers face a variety of obstacles when conducting out-of-hospital investigations. This paper reviews some common problems and discusses practical solutions to facilitate the process and help avoid traps. This discussion focuses on prospective prehospital research.

One challenge to EMS research is to find new methods of improving the quality of care delivered in the field. There has been an emphasis placed on “exciting” topics, such as cardiac arrest and trauma resuscitation. Other events dominate the daily practice of prehospital medicine, but have not been well-studied. For example, what is the best way to immobilize the spine? What should be done for a patient with a suspected C-spine injury who is wearing a motorcycle helmet? No one has a scientifically proven approach to solve these common prehospital problems. There is a need to look at problems such as immobilization, asthma, overdose, and congestive heart failure to see what can be done differently in the field.