A study on ambulance services and emergency care at local hospitals: perception of clients and health care providers
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Date
2007
Authors
Che Hamzah, Mohd Shaharudin Shah
Journal Title
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Abstract
Ambulance services· together with hospital Emergency Department act as the core for
Emergency Medical Services (EMS) System in Malaysia. The existence of this service
started officially since 50 decade ago and is still actively running to the present
moment. The Malaysian model was adapted from two famous models, which is the
Anglo-American, and German-Franco models. Centralization of the ambulance at
hospital compound was the icon for Malaysian EMS system until now.
This prospective study attempts to identify and evaluate the clients and other service
care providers' perception towards emergency care and ambulance services for the
year starting from January to December of 2004 at Hospital University Science
Malaysia (HUSM) and Hospital Kota Sharu (HKB), now known as the Hospital Raja
Perempuan Zainab II (HRPZ II). This study attempts to evaluate the perception towards
information related to the emergency care and ambulance services from clients who
use ambulance to get to the Emergency Department (ED) of both hospitals.
Additionally, this study also looked at the perception of clients who did not use
ambulance services but still had contact with the ED.
A total of 741 of respondents who used am bulance services were involved in this study
and only 631 of them were willing to give their opinion regarding the services. The
results show that from a total of 631 respondents, 80.1% (N=505) claimed that
ambulance services were very fast and efficient while 19.9% (N=126) had the opposite
opinion. This study also examined the perception from 100 respondents towards
Emergency Department services. The result show similar findings where 83% (N=83)
mentioned that ED services were very good and efficient; however, 17% (N=17) of
them claimed the opposite.
Based on the mean time of the ART (27.9 minutes) and EMS episode (53.9 minutes)
recorded in this study, client's perception towards ambulance services and emergency
care were that the services were very good and efficient despite the fact that this ART
was too slow if compare to the international standard of ART is which is 4 to 5 minute.
i
Generally, the results of the present survey show that the patterns of client's perception
could have possibly been influenced by their background and career. The study also
reveals that they did not have any specific parameter or a benchmark to rt:Ieasure the
quality of services received by them. Client's knowledge and attitude towards others
EMS system were also limited. A literature review undertaken in this study showed no
similar study had been undertaken for the whole Malaysia. Further, it was noted that no
studies were undertaken to compare the relationship between ambulance services and
emergency care at local hospitals. This is especially so with regards to the perception
of clients and others service- care providers at both ED of the HUSM and HRPZ II as
compared to that of the international standards.