Abdullah Almutairi
King Saud University College of Medicine, Saudi Arabia
Title: The level of comfort of emergency medical services personnel in pediatric patients care
Biography
Biography: Abdullah Almutairi
Abstract
Introduction: Emergency medical service (EMS) is a crucial component of the health care system. Pediatric emergencies are infrequent in the prehospital setting which makes the EMS personnel assessment and skills difficult to maintain and may decrease the comfort in dealing with pediatrics. Assessing the level of comfort among EMS personnel toward pediatric patient care is important to enhance the quality of prehospital care.
Method: This is a cross sectional study using a questionnaire-based survey. 5 points Likert-scale regarding the level of comfort presented as frequency, percentage, likert-scale mean, and standard deviation. A sum of all the answers of the five points Likert-scale questions is used to get a total score to compare between variables with the answer (very comfortable) = 5 and (very uncomfortable) = 1. Kruskal Wallis test is used to compare between Helicopter EMS (HEMS), ground EMS (GEMS) and hospital-based EMS (HB-EMS).
Results: The majority have shown a low level of comfort of 48% or less in all the questions. The lowest level of comfort reported in patient care was in newborn delivery with a likert scale mean of 2.8. Regarding skills, the lowest comfort reported in orotracheal intubation with a likert scale mean of 2.7. The majority (60%) were comfortable with using a bag-valve-mask in a pediatric patients with a likert scale mean of 3.7.
Conclusion: EMS providers in Riyadh have reported limited training in pediatric patient care, infrequent pediatric patient exposure, and low level of comfort in pediatric patient care.