Air versus Ground Transport for Medical Emergencies

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In a qualitative study, "research design should be a reflexive process operating through every stage of a project" (Maxwell,2008); the activities of collecting and analyzing data, developing and modifying theory, elaborating or refocusing the research questions, and identifying and dealing with validity threats are usually going on more or less simultaneously, each influencing all of the others. In addition, the researcher may need to reconsider or modify any design decision during the study in response to new developments or to changes in some other aspect of the design (Maxwell, 2008).

Qualitative studies are useful for understanding the meaning of events, situations, and actions, to understand the context within which participants act, identifying unanticipated phenomena and influences, understanding the processes by which events take place, and developing causal explanations (Maxwell, 2008).

A Trauma and Injury Severity Score (TRISS) methodology can be used to determine a difference in outcomes between the 2 groups, those transported by air versus those transported by ground.

The outcome variables will be:
- 30 day mortality as compared to an established database of trauma outcomes, using a Z statistic (Mitchell, Tallon,& Sealy,2007).
- A measure of the number of unexpected survivals (+) or deaths (-) per 100 patients (Mitchell, Tallon,& Sealy,2007).
- The research design used can be a retrospective database review of trauma patients for a specific 4/5/10 year period using a natural experimental design.
- In a natural experiment, the treatment (the independent variable of interest) varies through some naturally occurring or unplanned event that happens to be exogenous to the outcome (the dependent variable of interest) (Sagepub,n.d.). It is "natural" in the sense that it is not planned or intended to influence the outcome of interest (Sagepub,n.d.).
- In this case the treatment is the air versus ground transport used to bring the patients. The treatment happens naturally and is unplanned. The outcome is in terms of mortality (The Z and W scores).
- Another key to ...