Assessment of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Staff's knowledge and Practice about Principles and Equipment used for Patient Handling in EMS Centres of Isfahan Province

EMS staff must be ready in the scene for giving emergency medical care and transporting the patients to emergency wards. Patient handling is a dynamic process in that the consideration of its principles is a paramount importance to safety of both patients and personnel. Hence, we aimed to evaluate EMS staff’s knowledge and practice about the principles and equipment used for patient handling in Isfahan EMS centres. This descriptive-analytic study was conducted, via census method, on 80 EMS staff. The instruments were a demographic checklist and a questionnaire to assess the knowledge and practice of EMS staff about the principles and equipment for patient handling. To analyse the data, we use descriptive and analytic statistics such as Pearson correlation coefficient, using SPSS 16 software. Based on the results, 82.5% had an adequate knowledge and 76.25% appropriate level of practice. The mean of knowledge was 17.79±3.14 and that of practice was 19.275±3052. the variables such as age, job experiences, educational level, field of study, type of employment, workplace and type of task were not significantly associated with both knowledge and practice (P>0.05). Regardless of adequate level of knowledge and practice in the majority of EMS personnel, we recommend holding some in-service training.