D. Vyas1, S. Huffman1, J. Wright1, E. Larumbe1, H. Purohit2 1Texas Tech Health Science Center School Of Medicine,Department Of Surgery,Odessa, TX, USA 2Arogyaa Healthcare Private Limited,Chennai, TAMIL-NADU, India
Introduction:
Trauma is one of the leading causes of death in the developing world and a significant source in the developed world. A major factor in morbidity and mortality in trauma patient depends on the skills and abilities of the first responders at the scene. In previous articles we had implemented the Save Trauma and Road NaviGators (STRONG) initiative, part of the Million Live Fighters (MLF) program, as an effective method to train laypersons in essential trauma skills. With this study the STRONG program will have been implemented in 6 different languages and we will demonstrate the longitudinal success of the program across multiple languages and cultural barriers.
Methods:
We recruited 135 first responders from Jaipur, India, primarily police officers, and 500 first responders from Telegana, India, a mixture of police, firefighters, nurses, and emergency medical technicians. The Jaipur group is primarily Hindi and English speaking and will be referred to as the 5th language group. The Telegana group primarily speak Telegu and English and will be referred to as the 6th language group. Each group was trained with the 10 hour Acute Trauma Training (ATT) course.
Changes in confidence and competence in 11 essential trauma skills (airway, hemorrhage, fracture, cervical spine, chest, IV lines, extrication, helmets, scene assessment, triage, and communication) were measured using voluntary pre training and post training surveys and compared using a two sample t test. These results were compared to the changes in confidence from previous studies to determine the longitudinal results of the program.
Results:
Results from the 5th and 6th Language groups demonstrated statistically significant increases in confidence levels in each of the 11 essential trauma skills (P<0.001). We found a consistent increase in confidence across all experience, education, prior trauma experience, and initial survey (p<0.01).
We observed similar unilateral increases in confidence that were consistent with previous studies in other languages. Based on these findings we can conclude that the success of the simulation based training program is highly reproducible and can be successfully translated across language and cultural barriers. With the six languages already included in the program we have a potential coverage of over one third of the global population.
Conclusion:
Participants in both language groups showed significant improvement in clinical confidence that is comparable to previous studies in other languages. Based on these results we show that the benefits to the STRONG program can be successfully transmitted across language and cultural barriers. With the current potential coverage and the rapid growth in new training locations we can rapidly increase global trauma care coverage in under served areas. In future studies we hope to include more languages such as Mandarin Chinese to increase our global coverage.