An emergency medical service system in Thailand: providers' perspectives.

BACKGROUND Emergency medical services (EMS) in Thailand have been established for more than 20 years. However evaluation of EMS is limited The present study aimed to determine providers 'perspectives on EMS in Thailand MATERIAL AND METHOD The present study was conducted at the tenth Academic Annual Meeting of Emergency Medicine between February 9 and 13, 2009 at Rajavithi Hospital, Bangkok. All participants at the meeting were eligible and randomly selected for the survey Subjects were physicians, nurses, or paramedics who worked in Emergency Department/Room at hospitals in Thailand. The survey was performed by self-rated questionnaire. RESULTS Four hundred fifty questionnaires were distributed and 425 were returned completed (94.4%). Of those, 365 subjects (85.9%) were female, 359 (84.5%) were nurses, 103 (24.5%) worked at the ER for more than 10 years, and 284 (67.6%) worked at the community hospitals. The most three common issues of EMS system were insufficient medical personnel, insufficient medical devices, and lack of knowledge of medical personnel. At the ER, overcrowding was the most common issue, while problems with medical devices, collaborations with other organizations, and communication devices were main problems at the pre-hospital EMS. The average satisfactory score of EMS was 2.86 out of 5. CONCLUSION EMS in Thailand requires improvement in terms of numbers ofmedical personnel, well-equipped ambulance, and collaborations among organizations.