Britt-Inger Saveman

• RNT, PhD, Professor
• Umeå University

Background In significant events like chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE) incidents, additional expertise in specific chemical substances becomes essential. Train-the-trainer programmes are used to increase knowledge and skills in a variety of fields and have been shown to be a cost-effective training method, eliminat...

Aim: The aim of this study was to illuminate the meaning of being a nurse in the archipelago. Methodological design and justification: A phenomenological hermeneutical design was applied, as there is a need to understand the lifeworld and the meaning of being a nurse in the archipelago. Ethical issues and approval: Approval was granted by the...

Background Adequate training and preparation of medical first responders (MFRs) are essential for an optimal performance in highly demanding situations like disasters (e.g., mass accidents, natural catastrophes). The training needs to be as effective as possible, because precise and effective behavior of MFRs under stress is central for ensuring pa...

Background Since a family member’s stroke affects the entire family, family systems nursing conversations (FSNCs) may be an appropriate intervention to support the family as a whole. The purpose of our study was to illuminate family members’ experiences within their family situations 6 months after participating in FSNCs when a family member under...

Purpose: To explore the health and well-being of persons seven years after severe traumatic brain injury (STBI). Material and methods: Follow-up of 21 persons 1 and 7 years after STBI using surveys for functional outcome, anxiety/depression, health and mental fatigue. Interviews were conducted and analysed using qualitative content analysis. Con...

Purpose Major incidents in road tunnels remain a collaborative challenge for the emergency services (fire and rescue service, police and ambulance), emergency dispatch centres (EDCs) and infrastructure owners. The aim of this paper is to investigate how collaborative partners to the ambulance services perceive the rescue effort and to identify fact...

Background: In chemical incidents, infrequent but potentially disastrous, the World Health Organization calls for inter-organizational coordination of actors involved. Multi-organizational studies of chemical response capacities are scarce. We aimed to describe chemical incident experiences and perceptions of Swedish fire and rescue services, emer...

Background: In chemical incidents, infrequent but potentially disastrous, the World Health Organization calls for inter-organizational coordination of actors involved. Multi-organizational studies of chemical response capacities are scarce and testable hypotheses are largely lacking. We aimed to describe chemical incident experiences and perception...

Introduction Underground environments present challenges for providing and managing effective emergency care. Situational awareness (SA) has been suggested as a critical process to the management of care. Aim This study aims to explore the process of SA in the tasks of an ambulance incident commander (AIC) during a fullscale underground mine exerc...

Objectives Increased demands are placed on emergency services and their role and ability to act in incidents in challenging environments, for example, road tunnels. Collaboration between officers from emergency services (fire brigade, police and ambulance services) is important for an effective rescue effort. In Gothenburg, Sweden, a position as a...

To meet both current and future competence needs, improved and updated understanding of nurses’ scope of practice when working in remote communities is needed. The aim was to describe and analyze the characteristics of nursing encounters in primary healthcare in remote areas. The setting for the study was an island community in Finland. Nurses’ pat...

Objective Identify factors of preparedness for peer first response to underground mining emergencies with injured victims. Design Cross-sectional questionnaire study of Swedish underground mineworkers. Setting Seven out of nine Swedish underground mines. Participants A total of 741 mineworkers out of 1022 (73%) participated in this study. Inter...

Background: The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends involving lay people in prehospital care. Several training programmes have been implemented to build lay responder first aid skills. Findings show that most programmes significantly improved participants' first aid skills. However, there is a gap in knowledge of what factors influence the...

A major fire incident in a Swedish underground mine made the personnel from the mining company and the rescue service realize their limited preparedness. It was the beginning of a collaboration project that included the development of a new exercise model for a more effective joint rescue operation practice. The aim of this study was to explore the...

Purpose: To explore the experiences of being a family with one member suffering from severe traumatic brain injury (STBI) up to 7 years earlier through narrative family interviews. Methods: There are few studies where a family as a unit, including persons with STBI, are interviewed together. This study used a family systems research approach follow...

Background: In low and middle-income countries (LMICs), laypersons play a significant role in providing initial care to injured victims of traffic accidents. Post-crash first aid (PFA) training programmes for laypersons have become an important response to addressing knowledge and skills gaps in pre-hospital care. However, little is known about fa...

Purpose The purpose of this study was from a Swedish perspective to map experts' opinions on theoretical statements of essential collaboration activities for management of mining injury incidents. Design/methodology/approach A Delphi technique was performed, asking opinions from experts in iterative rounds to generate understanding and form consen...

Abstract: Responding to mass casualty incidents in a tunnel environment is problematic not least from a prehospital emergency medical services (EMS) perspective. The aim of this review was to 1) categorize preconditionsforemergencyresponseintunnelenvironmentsbasedonHaddon’smatrixand2)identifyspecific EMSknowledgeofprovidingprehospitalcare. Twentyei...

Background: An overwhelming proportion of road traffic deaths and injuries in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) occur in prehospital environments. Lay first responders such as police officers play an important role in providing initial assistance to victims of road traffic injuries either alone or in collaboration with others. The present s...

Background An overwhelming proportion of road traffic deaths and injuries in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) occur in prehospital environments. Lay first responders such as police officers play an important role in providing initial assistance to victims of road traffic injuries either alone or in collaboration with others. The present stu...

Background : The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends involving lay people in prehospital care. Several training programmes have been implemented to build lay responder first aid skills. Findings show that most programmes significantly improved participants’ first aid skills. However, there is a gap in knowledge of what factors influence the...

Background: The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends involving lay people in prehospital care. Several training programmes have been implemented to build lay responder first aid skills. Findings show that most programmes significantly improved participants’ first aid skills. However, there is a gap in knowledge of what factors influence the u...

Background: The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends involving lay people in prehospital care. Several training programmes have been implemented to build lay responder first aid skills. Findings show that most programmes significantly improved participants’ first aid skills. However, there is a gap in knowledge of what factors influence the u...

Background: The World Health Organisation (WHO) recommends involving lay people in prehospital care. Several training programmes have been implemented to build lay responder first aid skills. Findings show that most programmes significantly improved participants’ first aid skills. However, there is a gap in knowledge of what factors influence the u...

Background: An overwhelming proportion of road traffic deaths and injuries in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) occur in prehospital environments. Lay first responders such as police officers play an important role in providing initial assistance to victims of road traffic injuries either alone or in collaboration with others. The present st...

Background: In low and middle-income countries (LMICs), laypersons play a significant role in providing initial care to injured victims of traffic accidents. Post-crash first aid (PFA) training programmes for laypersons have become an important response to addressing knowledge and skills gaps in pre-hospital care. However, little is known about fac...

Background An overwhelming proportion of road traffic deaths and injuries in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) occur in prehospital environments. Lay first responders such as police officers play an important role in providing initial assistance to victims of road traffic injuries either alone or in collaboration with others. The present stu...

Background: High demands are placed on the emergency medical services to handle rescue operations in challenging environments such as tunnels. In Oslo, Norway a specialised management function within the emergency medical services, the medical on-scene commander, in line with the command structure within the police and fire brigade, might support...

Mass casualty incidents (MCI) in tunnels can result in devastating consequences. Despite this, there is a knowledge gap in the perspectives and experiences of strategic stakeholders in relation to the emergency medical response to MCI in tunnels. This study aims to explore and describe this issue. The study includes 11 interview participants from t...

Background Recently, road traffic injuries (RTIs) have become a major health problem affecting health systems in many low- and middle-income countries. Regardless of whether an ambulance is available for evacuation, police officers have been shown to arrive at the crash scene first, becoming, in effect, the first responders to RTI victims. Therefor...

Background: Recently, road traffic injuries (RTIs) have become a major health problem affecting health systems in many low- and middle-income countries. Regardless of whether an ambulance is available for evacuation, police officers have been shown to arrive at the crash scene first, becoming, in effect, the first responders to RTI victims. Theref...

Background An overwhelming proportion of road traffic deaths and injuries in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) occur in prehospital environments. Lay first responders such as police officers play an important role in providing initial assistance to victims of road traffic injuries either alone or in collaboration with others. The present stu...

Venous blood specimen collection is an important practical task that results in an analysis response that often leads to a clinical decision. Errors due to inaccurate venous blood specimen collection are frequently reported and can jeopardize patient safety because inaccurate specimens may result in a delayed or incorrect diagnosis and treatment. H...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine emergency medical service (EMS) personnel’s perceptions and experiences of managing underground mining injury incidents. Design/methodology/approach In total, 13 EMS personnel were interviewed according to a semi-structured interview guide. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analyzed using...

Aim: To assess the clinical course of disability, cognitive, and emotional impairments in patients with severe TBI (s-TBI) from 3 months to up to 7 years post trauma. Methods: A prospective cohort study of s-TBI in northern Sweden was conducted. Patients aged 18-65 years with acute Glasgow Coma Scale 3-8 were assessed with the Glasgow Outcome Sc...

Introduction Major injury incidents in confined settings such as tunnels and underground mineral- and metalliferous mines are rare, but when they do happen, the consequences may be severe with potential for many injured. The incident site is underground and it is difficult for the rescue and emergency medical service to get an overview and reach th...

Introduction The underground mining industry has one of the most hazardous industrial occupations, and requires an increased level of preparedness for injury incidents. The most important outcome for seriously injured victims is the reduction in morbidity and mortality. Receiving effective and timely care may mean the difference between life and de...

Introduction Major incident exercises are expensive to plan and execute, and often difficult to evaluate objectively. There is a need for a generic methodology for reporting results and experiences from major incidents so that data can be used for analysis, to compare results, exchange experiences, and for international collaboration in methodologi...

Introduction Norway is a country with many road tunnels and therefore also has experience with rescue operations in tunnel environments. Major incidents always challenge involved emergency services’ management skills. Oslo, Norway has a specially trained medical on-scene commander, a function already existing in police and rescue service. Intra-age...

Introduction Major injury incidents in underground metalliferous and mineral mines are rare, but if, e.g., a major fire would occur, it is the emergency medical service (EMS) together with the mining company and rescue service who perform the rescue operation. Therefore it is important to develop safe and efficient rescue operation procedures for a...

Background Recently, road traffic injuries (RTIs) have become a major health problem affecting health systems in many low- and middle-income countries. Regardless of whether an ambulance is available for evacuation, police officers have been shown to arrive at the crash scene first, becoming, in effect, the first responders to RTI victims. The expe...

Approximately 36,000 Swedish children seek medical care annually because of injuries during school time. The purpose of this field study is to investigate risky outdoor play at the school yard and to describe teachers’ perceptions of risk and safety in relation to learning and development. The study includes observations of children (6–12 years old...

Background: The availability of prehospital trauma care is an important means of reducing serious injuries and fatalities associated with road traffic injuries (RTIs). Lay responders such as traffic police play an important role in the provision of prehospital trauma care to RTI victims, especially where there is no established prehospital care sys...

Rationale: There is a lack of long-term follow-up studies focused on injured and uninjured survivors' experiences of the recovery process after major traffic crashes. Aim: To explore all survivors' experiences of long-term physical and psychological consequences and recovery 5 years after a major bus crash. Methodological design and justificati...

The purpose of the study was to describe the opinions of ambulance personnel regarding differences between using a heated mattress and a standard ambulance mattress. This study was an intervention study with pre- and post-evaluation. Evaluations of the opinions of personnel regarding the standard unheated mattress were conducted initially. After th...

Purpose: The study aimed to describe and understand adult family members' experiences of participating in a Family Health Conversation (FamHC) when a child is diagnosed with cancer. Design and methods: Twelve individual interviews were performed with adult family members who had participated in a FamHC. During the interviews each interviewee was...

Background: The aim of this study was to survey the current equipment used for prevention, treatment and monitoring of accidental hypothermia in Swedish pre-hospital services. Methods: A questionnaire was sent to all road ambulance services (AS), the helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS), the national helicopter search and rescue service...

Background: The whole family is affected when a person suffers from stroke, but few studies have focused on families' expectations following the stroke. Objective: The aim of this study was to illuminate what persons with stroke and their family members talk about in Family Health Conversations (FamHCs) with focus on the future and how nurses le...

Objective Underground mining is associated with obvious risks that can lead to mass casualty incidents. Information about such incidents was analyzed in an integrated literature review. Methods A literature search (1980-2015) identified 564 modern-era underground mining reports from countries sharing similar occupational health legislation. These...

Study/Objective To explore social connections among survivors, five years after a major bus crash. Background Consequences and recovery for survivors after transport disasters or mass-casualty incidents are being studied to a great extent. Receiving sufficient social and psychosocial support from family, friends, and others has been presented as a...

Study/Objective To study perceived collaboration among mining workers and managers, rescue service personnel, and ambulance personnel when mining incidents occur. Background Studies focused on rescue operations in mining incidents and on the emergency medical service´s part in the rescue operations are scarce. In Sweden, usually the local rescue a...

Objective: The aim of this study was to explore physical and mental consequences and injury mechanisms among bus crash survivors to identify aspects that influence recovery. Methods: The study participants were the total population of survivors (N=56) from a bus crash in Sweden. The study had a mixed-methods design that provided quantitative and...

Background: It has been proposed that support for families in which a family member has suffered a stroke should involve the whole family system. Aim: The aim was to evaluate the responses of Family Health Conversation (FamHC) in families with a member under the age of 65 who has been diagnosed with stroke. Methods: In this mixed methods research s...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse factors influencing perceptions of preparedness in the response to terrorist attacks of operational personnel in Swedish emergency organizations. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected using a questionnaire distributed to operational personnel from the police, rescue and ambulance servic...

Stroke in midlife is a life altering, challenging experience for the whole family thereby necessitating a family approach to intervention. The aim of this study was to describe the experiences of 17 family members living in Sweden, including seven adult stroke patients (six males; one female) under the age of 65 who participated in a series of thre...

Family Health Conversations (FamHC) increase health and well-being, but knowledge about their cost-effectiveness, and how to best calculate this, is lacking. In this feasibility study we evaluated the cost-effectiveness of using FamHC with families in which a middle-aged family member had suffered stroke. Seven families participated in a FamHC inte...

Background: The ambulance milieu does not offer good thermal comfort to patients during the cold Swedish winters. Patients' exposure to cold temperatures combined with a cold ambulance mattress seems to be the major factor leading to an overall sensation of discomfort. There is little research on the effect of active heat delivered from underneath...

Suicides by drowning have received limited attention by researchers. A recent finding that almost one-third of all drowning deaths in Sweden were classified as suicide instigated this study. We identified 129 cases of suicide by drowning in Northern Sweden and analyzed the circumstances and the psychiatric history prior to the suicide. Information...

Background: Senior citizens are over-represented in injury statistics, and fall-related injuries are globally recognized as a major threat to their health and wellbeing. Outdoor falls are likely to occur among those who are active and healthy when walking or cycling. The objective of this study was to explore active senior citizens' experiences and...

The aim of this study was to illuminate which topics 2 couples, ages younger than 65 years old, where 1 partner has suffered a stroke, choose to focus on when participating in nurse-led family health conversations. Six conversations were audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed by qualitative content analysis. Three categories emerged illustrating tha...

The aim of this study was to illuminate which topics 2 couples, ages younger than 65 years old, where 1 partner has suffered a stroke, choose to focus on when participating in nurse-led family health conversations. Six conversations were audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed by qualitative content analysis. Three categories emerged illustrating tha...

Advanced mobile devices allow registered nurses and nursing students to keep up-to-date with expanding health-related knowledge but are rarely used in nursing in Sweden. This study aims at describing registered nurses' and nursing students' views regarding the use of advanced mobile devices in nursing practice. A cross-sectional study was completed...

Background and aim: A family systems nursing intervention, Family Health Conversation, has been developed in Sweden by adapting the Calgary Family Assessment and Intervention Models and the Illness Beliefs Model. The intervention has several theoretical assumptions, and one way translate the theory into practice is to identify core components. Thi...

AimTo explore the survivors' experiences after a major bus crash. Background Survivors' experiences of emergency care after transportation related major incidents are relatively unexplored, with research involving survivors mainly focused on pathological aspects or effects of crisis support. Methods Semi-structured telephone interviews were conduct...

Background Exposure to cold temperatures is, often, a neglected problem in prehospital care. One of the leading influences of the overall sensation of cold discomfort is the cooling of the back. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of a heated ambulance mattress- prototype on body temperatures and thermal comfort in an experimental stud...

Senior citizens get around, to a large extent, as pedestrians, and safe walking is desirable for senior citizens allowing them to stay mobile, independent and healthy in old age. Senior citizens are over-represented in injury statistics, and fall-related injuries are common. The aim of this study was to investigate fall-related injuries including h...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate factors that influence the probability that staff will commit acts of inadequate care, abuse, and neglect. Design/methodology/approach – A cross-sectional survey study was carried out in one county in the middle of Norway (Sør-Trøndelag). Random sampling, stratified by size of nursing homes, an...

The objective was to illuminate the experience of injuries and the process of injury reporting within the Swedish skydiving culture. Data contained narrative interviews that were subsequently analyzed with content analysis. Seventeen respondents (22–44 years) were recruited at three skydiving drop zones in Sweden. In the results injury events relat...

The aim was to investigate non-minor injuries sustained during outdoor activities among 0-12 year old children and to explore self-reported circumstances surrounding these incidents. During 2007-2009, the Umeå University Hospital injury database (IDB) registered 795 children with moderate (n = 778) and serious (n = 17) injuries, such as fractures....

Objective: To characterize the long-term consequences of mild traumatic brain injury regarding post-concussion symptoms, post-traumatic stress, and quality of life; and to investigate differences between men and women. Design: Retrospective mixed-methods study. Subjects/patients and methods: Of 214 patients with mild traumatic brain injury seeking...

Background Exposure to cold temperatures is often a neglected problem in prehospital care. Cold exposure increase thermal discomfort and, if untreated causes disturbances of vital body functions until ultimately reaching hypothermia. It may also impair cognitive function, increase pain and contribute to fear and an overall sense of dissatisfaction....

Background Crashes occur regularly throughout the world and can result in multiple fatalities and many injuries. Research into how survivors experience a crash is very limited. AimTo describe and analyse the nonphysical consequences of a multifatality bus crash in Sweden and the subsequent effect on the surviving passengers' lives. Method The parti...

Background Drowning deaths constitute a significant proportion of unnatural deaths globally. In Sweden and other high-income countries, drowning deaths have decreased. This study investigates the epidemiology and current trends of unintentional, intentional, and undetermined drowning deaths with emphasis on the presence of alcohol and other drugs....

Patients in prehospital care, irrespective of diseases or trauma might experience thermal discomfort because of a cold environment and are at risk for decreasing body temperature which can increase both morbidity and mortality. To explore patients' experiences of being cold when injured in a cold environment. Twenty persons who had been injured in...

Background: In nursing care, the steady increase of health related information implies that there is need for useful tools that easily provide mobile access to accurate information.

Background: Family systems nursing embraces the view that one family member’s illness affects other family members and vice versa. Family nursing developed as a way for nurses to work with families to promote health. Previously, teachers performed most of the education on health-promoting conversations with families on campus. Because online educat...

BACKGROUND: Social support is generally known to influence health-related quality of life (HRQoL), but this association is not well explored among older patients with chronic heart failure. AIMS: (1) To describe social support in older patients with chronic heart failure in relation to gender. (2) To investigate if age, gender, cohabitation, percei...

Railway traffic and speeds continue to increase as do train crashes and their severity. Simultaneously, the Swedish railway network is overloaded, impeding necessary maintenance and aggravating an already dangerous situation. Crash avoidance systems have been improved, but interior safety seems to be neglected. In the present case study from a trai...

Rarely described are people's lived experiences from severe injury events such as train crashes. The number of train crashes named disasters with ≥10 killed and/or ≥100 nonfatally injured grows globally and the trend shows that more people survive these disasters today than did so in the past. This results in an increased number of survivors needin...

The instrument Families' Importance in Nursing Care--Nurses' Attitudes (FINC-NA) was developed to measure nurses' attitudes toward the importance of families in nursing care. The low variations in item responses, which affect the discrimination ability and unstable internal consistency, have been considered as limitations. The aim of this study was...

This paper reports an analysis of aggregated data from two national studies on Swedish community-based nurses' and Japanese Public Health Nurses' responses to hypothetical elder abuse cases. Elder abuse is an under-researched area despite being globally recognized as a serious and escalating problem. Yet research, adding needed socio-cultural persp...

Accessible summary The attitude that psychiatric nurses have towards the importance of involving families in their care is fundamental to the quality of the intervention family members are offered. Research evidence supports the view that psychiatric nurses' positive attitudes towards families, in psychiatric care, encourage them to engage more fre...

Background Previous disaster studies mainly focused on analyzing the experience from a psychological or psychiatric perspective. The occurrence of post-traumatic stress disorder also has been the central issue when studying survivors of train crashes. Research concerning being involved in train crashes is scarce. Objective The aim of this study wa...

Background Prehospital patients, irrespective of diseases or trauma, might experience discomfort due to a cold environment and are at risk for decreasing body temperature which can increase morbidity and mortality. Research concerning experiences of being injured in a cold environment is scarce. Objective The aim of this study was to explore the p...