The effectiveness of a chest pain learning program to improve the level of knowledge/ skill of EMT’s in pre-hospital chest pain care

Introduction: Chest pain continues to be one of the more common primary complaints of patients requiring emergency care in the pre-hospital care setting. In the field, they are attended to by first responders, often the emergency medical technicians (EMT’s), who provide pre-hospital care to stabilize the patients in out-of-hospital medical emergencies.

Objectives:The primary objective of the study are to determine the effectiveness of a course on pre-hospital management of chest pain to improve the level of knowledge / skill of EMT’s in pre-hospital chest pain care in terms of achievement of a significant increase in the participants’ scores on a knowledge / skills questionnaire. Another objective is to determine the demographics of the emergency medical technicians (EMT’s) from the selected emergency medical services (EMS) companies.

Methodology: A chest pain learning program was presented to active emergency medical technicians (EMT’s)in 2 selected emergency medical services (EMS) companies. Demographic data of participatingEMT’s were gathered. The effectiveness of the chest pain learning program was measuredthrough the results of a level of knowledge tool that was deployed before and after participatingin the program. Data were analyzed through descriptive analysis and statistical data analysis.

Results: Among the EMT’s included in the study, 74.4% were male, with an average age of 28, college graduates (82.9%) and are also trained nurses (66.67%). Also, based on the study, 81.2% of them handle chest pain cases at least once a week. Furthermore, the mean score of the EMTs in the EMS Level of Knowledge Tool before taking the learning program is 12.8174, which increased to 13.7 after attending the chest pain learning program. It got a p-value of 0.01, which is less than 0.05, at 5% level of significance.

Conclusion: Majority of the EMT’s employed by the 2 selected EMS companies are RN and EMT’s with a college degree and who encounter out-of-hospital chest pain patients at least once a week. Also, based on the analysis done in the study, there is sufficient evidence to say that there is a significant improvement in the scores of the EMTs in EMS Level of Knowledge Tool before and after attending the chest pain learning program, thus demonstrating its effectiveness.