JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

The Primary Trauma Care (PTC) course was originally developed to instruct healthcare workers in the management of the severely injured patients in low and middle income countries with limited medical resources. The PTC has now been taught for more than 25 years. Many studies have demonstrated that the two-day Primary Trauma Care (PTC) workshop is a useful and informative to front-line health staff and has helped improve knowledge and confidence in trauma management but there is little evidence showing that it leads to changes in clinical practice. The Kirkpatrick (KM) and Knowledge Attitude Practice (KAP) models are effective methods to evaluate this approach. Our study aimed to combine 2 models to evaluate the impact of the PTC program for healthcare staff in two Vietnamese hospitals.

Objective:

to investigate how the “2 day PTC course” impacts on the level of clinical practice in healthcare staff in the emergency departments of two Vietnamese provincial hospitals.

Methods:

We conducted the PTC course over 2 days in the emergency departments (ED) of Thanh Hoa and Ninh Binh hospitals in February and March 2022 respectively. Sequential cross-sectional surveys using validated instruments were conducted immediately pre- and post-course and at 6 months after course delivery. The questionnaires were analysed by simple frequency analysis.

Results:

At level 1 of KM, nearly 100 % participant were satisfied with the course. At level 2 (knowledge), the multiple-choice question (MCQ) and confident matrix (CM) improved significantly from 60% to 77% and 59.3% to 71.3% respectively (p<0.01), these improvements were seen in both nurse and doctor subgroups. The focus of Level 3 was on practice and saw a significant incremental change with scenarios checklist (SC) points jumping from 5.9 1.9 to 9.0 0.9 and bedside clinical checklist (BCC) points increased from 5 1.5 to 8.3 0.8 (p<0.01). At 6-months follow up, MCQ, CM and SC all remained unchanged (p>0.05) except MCQ score in the nurse subgroup (p<0.01).

Conclusions:

The PTC course undertaken in 2 local hospitals of Vietnam was successful in improving 3 levels of KM for ED healthcare staff. This improvement was maintained for at least 6 months post course. The PTC courses are effective in providing improvement and sustainment in 3 Levels for low- and middle-income countries like Vietnam. Clinical Trial: The trial is registered in ANZCTR with trial ID is ACTRN12621000371897.