J. K. Wright1, J. Lung1, S. Huffman1, D. Vyas1 1Texas Tech Health Sciences Center,School Of Medicine,Lubbock, TX, USA
Introduction: The Million Life Fighters program is a multinational initiative whose primary goal is the bettering of prehospital trauma outcomes in rural locations. This initiative strives to reach this goal through training individuals in rural areas in the basics of trauma care. Previous examinations of this program showed its ability to improve the abilities of those with little medical knowledge prior to the training. Further examination was conducted to determine if the initiative improved those with some previous competency in basic prehospital care. In order to ascertain this information, we studied individuals who began the Million Life Fighters training with high pre-course competence and measured their pre-to-post-curriculum gains in confidence and competence.
Methods: Over three hundred volunteers from multiple institutions, using multiple languages, were given surveys and tests to score confidence and competence. The majority of participants being from the manipal community in India or from members of a volunteer disaster relief force in Jaipur. The range of possible “competence” scores were divided into thirds and those that scored in the upper third were labeled “high competence”. (The maximum competence score was 26). Those of high competence were further subdivided into low, medium, and high-confidence groups based upon assessed confidence scores. Possible confidence scores, ranging from zero to 20, were divided equally into the three sub-sets. Paired t test analysis was conducted to measure gains in confidence and competence. The p-value for this study is .001.
Results: The 56 who started in the high competence and low confidence group increased their confidence by 11.98 (t=21.02) and competence by 3.04 (t=7.64). The 27 in the high competence and medium confidence group increased their confidence by 8.07 (t=13.48) and competence by 2.62 (t=5.13). The group who started off with high competence and confidence proved too small to show statistically significant results.
Conclusion: While a fundamental aspect of the Million Life Fighters initiative is to bring prehospital medical education to a wider populace, a population who are often new to any medical training, this program also proves its utility in being able to improve the capability of those who have a proficient understanding.