The situation of pre-hospital emergency care through traumatic patients have been admitted to emergency department of Viet Duc University Hospital in 2023

Introductions: Pre-hospital Emergency Care (PEC), especially for severe trauma is playing an important role. The study was conducted to provide an overview of the situation of PEC in Vietnam through traumatic patients at Viet Duc University Hospital.

Materials and methods: A cross-sectional study enrolled all traumatic patients admitted to the Emergency Department of Hospital and had complete medical records, during the period from July to September, 2023, regardless of gender, age. Data were collected and processed using SPSS 20.0 software.

Results: Characteristics of target population: 343 cases of traumatic patients were enrolled, male was majority accounted for 71.4%; The age group from 15 to 59 years old accounted for highest proportion (63%), ≥ 60 years old (32.6%). The sites of accident were mostly occurred on road (64.3%), at home (23.9%) and working place (10.2%). The brain injury accounted for the highest proportion (55.4%), multiple injuries (54.8%), extremities injury (38.5%), maxillofacial injury (25.1%) and spine injury (21.0%).

Situation of PEC: First aid was mostly provided by first witness/accompanying person (64.5%), by community first aid provider (24.1%), only 11.4% provided by professional health worker. 8.7% patients were transported by taxi/car, 16.7% by unsafe ambulance, lacking official regulated medicine or equipment, or the health personnel did not know about the patient’s medical history. Some first aid were not provided on scene including: airway management 22.2%, wound care and dressing 33.0%, collar to cervical spine 14.5%, extremities splint 34.9%. Additionally, many extremities splint and wound care, 24.5% and 37.5% respectively, were done improperly.

Conclusions and recommendations: The study showed some challenges such as improper first aid provision or unsafe transportation, which potentially cause unwanted risk for the patients. The author highly recommend the improvement of PEC according to the new law on this issue.