Pre-hospital emergency care in the remote areas in Jordan

In Jordan, pre-hospital care is provided by the civil defense department in general but there is a wide underpopulated area in the eastern and southern parts of the coutry plus many remote small villages and communities, which are underserved by clinics, hospitals and civil defense units and the evacuation routes are very long, so emergency care which is needed is provided by general physicians and family practitioners with little if any training in emergency care.

Ten years ago we started to train all physicians who would practice in such areas, in providing emergency care.

All 220 physicians graduated from the family medicine residency programs in Jordan had to rotate through the emergency departments as basic 3-month rotation in their family medicine training program and were required to master all life saving skills before they finish this rotation.

Also all of them were tested to make sure that they are competent to provide emergency care.

A questionnaire was designed for both the receiving hospitals and the providers in the field physicians to assess the outcome of this training scheme.

Feedback from the hospitals on the quality of care given to patients by those physicians in pre-hospital setting indicated great improvement in evaluating, stabilizing, and providing the necessary care mainly to trauma and cardiac patients.

All providers feel more satisfied with their practice and less stressed when they face an emergency, and that pre-hospital care had improved dramatically in those remote areas.