Effect of pre-hospital trauma management training program on the capability of clinical decision-making in emergency medical technicians

Improving clinical decision-making is one of the challenges of the pre-hospital emergency system. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the effect of pre-hospital trauma management training program on the capability of clinical decision- making in emergency medical technicians.
Methods & Materials: In a randomized controlled field trial study, 64 pre-hospital emergency technicians from Gonabad University of Medical Sciences, were randomly assigned to either intervention or control groups by the stratified sampling method in 2018. For the intervention group, a pre-hospital trauma management training program was administered based on existing domestic and global standards in a two-day crash course with a combination of learning techniques including lecture and simulation. The research instruments were a demographic questionnaire and a researcher-made questionnaire on clinical decision-making, completed before the course, immediately and one month after the completion of the course. Data were analyzed by the SPSS software version 19 using independent t-test, the repeated analysis of variance and Bonferroni's post-test.

The mean changes in clinical decision-making scores before and immediately after the intervention (9.31 vs. 0.3), before and one month after the intervention (7.86 vs. 1.1) and immediately after the intervention and follow-up one month after the intervention (1.62 in. vs. 1.39) were significantly higher in the intervention group than in the control group (P<0.001).

The pre-hospital trauma management training program can improve clinical decision-making in pre-hospital emergency medical technicians. Therefore, this program can be integrated into the technicians’ training programs.