Emergency medical services use for trauma patient transportation to hospital

An effort is being made to reduce pre-hospital emergency missions as much as possible without any harm to people and reduce the quality of services. This can be achieved by determining some characters and conditions of patients with their need for emergency services.  The purpose of the present study was to determine the rate of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) use for transportation to hospital by trauma patients and that relation with some traumatic conditions.

Methods and Materials: 

This study is a descriptive cross-sectional study that has performed on traumatic patients referred to emergency department of Shahid Beheshti hospital in ten days consecutively. Patients recruited to study with continuous non-probability sampling and according to entrance criteria. One self-created checklist was used for data collecting. The validity and reliability of this checklist were determined. The researcher and related colleague presented in 24 hours in emergency department and filled the checklist. The data analysis was conducted using SPSS software, version 16.

The average age of the participants was 35.2 that from 400 patients entered to this study 326 (81.7%) were male and 74 (18.3%) were female. There are significant relations between the kind of transportation by EMS or personal vehicle and patient variables of education, injury mechanism, injury kind, injury location and multiple trauma. There are no significant relations with sex and nationality. From quantitative variables such as age, pain rate at admission, the time of first assessment and the time of first intervention for patients, there are significant relations between the kind of transportation to hospital and pain rate and the time of first assessment.

It is necessary to performing further and comprehensive studies about effective factors on kind of transportation and providing appropriate model for safe and effective decision practically around the call of EMS and patient transportation.