The Readiness in the Service and the Level of Awareness in Accordance with the Standards of Emergency Medical Service System of Emergency Medical Practitioners at the Local Government Organization in Phatthalung

Abstract

            This descriptive research aimed to study, 1) the readiness in the service of the emergency medical service system standards, 2) the level of awareness of emergency medical service system, and 3) the comparison of the awareness of compliance with emergency medical service standards of emergency medical practitioners classified by service units operating in local administrative organizations in Phatthalung Province. The sample consisted of 210 persons registered with the Phatthalung Provincial Health Office. The instrument used in this study was a questionnaire. Data were analyzed using descriptive and One-Way ANOVA analysis, and test the difference of the paired averages according to the Scheffe's method. The results were as follows;

1. The emergency medical service unit in Phatthalung has the readiness of emergency medical service in accordance to the standards of the emergency medical institutions (90 percent). When considering each criterion, it was found that the readiness of vehicles, materials, medical equipment, and policies and management reached 100%, followed by the practitioner at 99.50 percent and budget at 90.50 percent.


2. The awareness of the operational process according to the emergency medical service system classified by local administrative organizations found that all of the three groups had the highest level of awareness. The emergency medical practitioners working in the sub- district administration organization had the highest mean scores (M = 4.81, SD = .40), followed by those in the provincial administrative organizations (M = 4.79, SD = .43), and municipalities (M = 4.51, SD = .59), respectively.


3. The comparison of the awareness of the operation of the emergency medical service system by the emergency medical workers classified by service units found that there were statistically significant differences at the .05 level (F_{2, 66.4}  = 6.991, p < .05). Moreover, the paired test results found that the sub-district administrative organizations are different from those in the municipality.

            This research demonstrated that the improvement of emergency medical operations in local administrative organizations which had the potential to be a model for the standard in the emergency medical service system.