Original Article
First Aid Awareness
and Practice of Highway
Traffic Police Officers from Three States in Sudan, 2021
Musab I. I. Muhammed1, Basheir E. Shumo2, Deena A. A. Mohamed3*
1Alfajr College for Sciences and Technology, Khartoum,
Sudan
2Community Medicine,
Program of Medicine,
Alfajr College for Sciences
and Technology, Khartoum, Sudan
3Assistant professor
Research and Development Center, Alfajr Collage
for Sciences and Technology,
Khartoum, Sudan.
*Corresponding author
Deena
Abdalfatah Abdelgadir Mohamed, Assistant professor, Research and Development Center,
Alfajr Collage for Sciences and Technology, Khartoum, Sudan. Email: deenamohammed@gmail.com
Abstract
Background: Road
Traffic Accidents (RTAs) are considered one of the main causes of death
worldwide. Most RTAs deaths occurred before reaching the hospital. First Aids
are lifesaving skills that are essential to road traffic police officers (TPOs)
since they are often the first responders to those who are affected by RTAs on
the highways.
Aim: the study aimed to assess the awareness and practice of
Highway TPOs regarding First Aid procedures.
Methods: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among TPOs working in the three most affected States by RTAs in Sudan, as
reported by the Ministry of Interior. The data was collected by face-to-face
interviews using a structured pretested questionnaire that covered the TPOs’
characteristics, awareness and practice towards traffic accident victims.
Permission to carry out the study was obtained from the concerned Federal and
State institutions. Informed consent was obtained from the participants. Statistical Package for Social Sciences
was used for both descriptive and inferential statistics.
Results: Only one person of the 134 targeted officers didn’t
respond giving a response rate more than 99%. Fifty-seven percent
of the participants stated that they
had sufficient knowledge about First Aid and 45% of the TPOs had attended first
aid courses. The First Aid awareness score of the Highway TPOs indicated that
almost half of them (48 %) had a good level of awareness about the First Aid.
Almost all (99.2%) Highway TPOs knew the correct action to be taken in cases of fractures and all of them knew the correct
actions to stop bleeding. The least correct action (only 2.3%) was in the
case of dealing with a comatose patient. There was no association between the
TPOs practice in regard to correct positioning of a comatose patient and their
First Aid training (p-value 0.67). Years of experience were found to
significantly affect improvement of first aid awareness and practice (P-value
0.01).
Conclusion: We conclude that the knowledge and practice of The Highway TPOs regarding the procedures needed in case of fractures and bleeding was adequate.
Dealing with comatose patients was the weakest point in the first aid procedures (97.7%), even among trained officers. More than half of the officers (55%) never had the chance to attend training courses in First Aid. This situation confirms the need for emphasis in training and workshops on all components of First Aid especially dealing with comatose patients; and the need to extend formal training to cover all Highway TPOs.
Keywords: First Aid, Traffic
police officers, Road traffic accidents, Sudan
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