Assessing Shiraz Citizen's Attitude and Satisfaction Towards Emergency Medical Services in 2010-2011

Pre-hospital Emergency Medical Services (EMS) is one of the most important components of health care systems. Community awareness about its services could improve the performance. This study is aimed at assessing the citizens’ awareness and satisfaction about Shiraz EMS. Through this cross-sectional study, 1680 residents of Shiraz citizens have been selected by cluster random sampling. Each person has been asked some questions about their knowledge and also satisfaction of EMS performance with a valid and reliable questionnaire through phone interview. The data were analyzed with SPSS using T- test, Anova and Regression with “0.05” level of significance. This study revealed that the knowledge of the residents who are living in lower socioeconomic part of the city is lower than the residents of the other areas. The mean awareness score of each area was significantly different comparing to the other areas, based on their socioeconomic status. In better socioeconomic status, the knowledge score was higher. There was also significant relationship between education and gender with knowledge about EMS performance. Meanwhile, the relationship with age was reverse. Although 48.6% had no idea about EMS, 527 (31.4%) were satisfied by its services. There was only 7.3% dissatisfaction. While the awareness about EMS’s duties could decrease irrelevant calls to EMS, education, especially for the residents of lower socioeconomic areas of the city is recommended. In addition, it is suggested that in feasibility studies or using other methods of evaluating EMS performance, socioeconomic status should be considered as independent variables.