Contributing factors and issues associated with rural ambulance crashes: literature review and annotated bibliography.

Ambulance crashes occur with greater frequency and severity than crashes involving vehicles of similar size and weight characteristics. Crashes in rural areas tend to be more severe in terms of injury or death to vehicle occupants. The purpose of this article was to examine the extant literature, as well as summarize and discuss the overlapping findings of that body of literature. A stepwise literature search was conducted using the following MeSH search terms ambulance; accident, traffic; emergency medical technician; occupational health; and rural in descending combination. MEDLINE was used as the primary database but was augmented by searches of Academic Search Premier, Comprehensive Index of Nursing, Allied Health Literature, and ProQuest Dissertation International. The search resulted in 32 article citations, and of these, 28 were included. An annotated bibliography is followed by a discussion and conclusion that identify opportunities for prevention activities in the areas of education, enforcement, and engineering.