Prevalence and Related Factors of Post-Traumatic StressDisorder in Emergency Medical Technicians; a Cross-Sectional Study

Ongoing exposure to a variety of Pre-hospital Emergencies (PE) has placed Emergency Medi-cal Technicians (EMTs) at serious psychiatric compromise such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Thepresent study aimed to evaluate the prevalence and associated factors of PTSD among EMTs.

Thisprospective cross-sectional study was conducted on EMTs in the Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in west ofIran. A baseline information questionnaire including personal work-related characteristics and the PTSD check-list of DSM-5 (PCL-5) were used for data collection. Non-parametric tests and multivariate linear regression wereused to evaluate the associated factors of PTSD in these participants.

Among the participants, 22% oftechnicians had PTSD-diagnostic criteria. The mean total PCL-5 score was 21.60 ± 11.45, while the scores were38.02 ± 6.08 and 17.47 ± 8.36 in the PTSD-diagnosed and undiagnosed groups, respectively. The most commonsymptom of the clusters was negative alterations in cognition with a mean score of 7.42 ± 4.63. After adjustingconfounders, the number of missions (t= 2.50, P= 0.013), work experience (t= -3.24, P= 0.001) and number ofshifts (t: 26.38, P < 0.001) were significantly corelated with PCL-5 score.

The results indicated thatthe prevalence of PTSD among EMTs personnel of hamadan province is high. EMTs with the age of≤30 years,work experience of≤10 years, married status, informal employment, emergency medical technician’s degree,and more than 8 shifts per month, as well as no previous training history had a higher total PCL-5 score.