Obstacles to Access to Medical Emergency Services in the OldArea of Semnan City

One of the basic criteria in improving the level of public health is to increase the level ofcitizens’ access to medical services, especially emergency services. The old districts of cities have manyproblems including problems in accessing medical services. The aim of this study is to investigate theobstacles to having access to emergency medical services in a standard time in the historical area ofSemnan.

The present research was an applied descriptive field study, which was performed inthe Emergency Medical Center (115 Emergency) of Semnan using interviews and questionnaires. Thestudy population in determining the obstacles included the staff and the director of Semnan EmergencyMedical Center. The obstacle confirmation phase, included 15 experts who were selected via conveniencesampling. First, based on library studies, previous information, consultation with 115 emergency per-sonnel of Semnan, and field inspection, the indicators affecting accessibility to 115 emergency medicalservices in the old area of Semnan were extracted. The extracted indicators were assessed using Delphimethod and a questionnaire was prepared using these indicators, based on the pairwise comparisonmatrix of the present study. The prepared questionnaire was distributed and explanations were given onhow to answer the questions and they were collected after being filled out. The data obtained from thequestionnaire were entered into decision making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) softwareand were analyzed using Dematel technique.

The most important barriers to accessing emer-gency medical services in the studied area, from the perspective of research experts, were found to betransportation standards with a weight of (35/318), architecture with a weight of (35/163), educationwith a weight of (34/778), time with a weight of (34/665), and communication with a weight of (34/238),respectively.

3 of the 5 criteria constituting barriers to access to emergency medical serviceswere of the effective type and only two criteria of transportation and communication were of the affectedtype. Therefore, these factors have a high weight and are confirmed as barriers to accessing emergencymedical services in the studied area. Also, considering that there were no evaluation errors (includinglack of supervision) in the model of this research, it can be said that these factors are the most importantbarriers to accessing emergency medical services.