The response of scene call volume to prehospital education.

Introduction: Transport of injured patients directly from a scene to a trauma center improves survival of patients and shortens their length of stay in the hospital. This paper studies the relationship between education presentations to prehospital personnel and scene call volume. The education sessions emphasize safety issues and how, when, and why to call for air medical transport. Methods: The town and date of scene flights were compared to the town and date of flight presentations and aircraft demonstrations. The length of time from a presentation to a scene call for each town was determined, and a cumulative frequency graph was drawn. Epidemiologic curves of presentations and calls were drawn for each town. Based on these graphs, observations of a relationship were obtained. Results: There were 65 scene calls to 27 towns that had no education programs. There were 880 scene calls to 90 towns that had 235 education programs. There were 21 towns that received a total of 41 presentations and never initiated a scene call. The results show that scene call requests are more likely to occur within three months of a presentation. Individual town analysis shows variability of response to education programs. Conclusion: Prehospital provider education programs increase scene call volume, but this effect seems to last for three months. On a town-by-town basis there are many other determinants of scene call volume.