Evaluating the Hamad Medical Corporation Ambulance Services Major Incident Response Training Program to Ascertain Knowledge Acquisition and Retention Amongst First Responders in Qatar

Background: Hamad Medical Corporation Ambulance Services (HMCAS) employ staff from countries around the world including, Australia, Canada, India, Jordan, Morocco, New Zealand, Philippines, South Africa, Tunisia, United Kingdom as well as the United States of America. A mechanism to standardize the management of mass casualty incidents (MCI) by HMCAS paramedics was proposed through MIR training and a user-friendly MIR guide. Having an understanding and background knowledge of special circumstances such as Hazmat, mass gatherings and other special settings requires an understanding.
Aim: The aim of this study to determine if, and to what extent, HMCAS paramedics possessed MIR knowledge, skills and experience prior to completing the MIR training programme, determine the HMCAS paramedics’ knowledge on mass incident response following the MIR training programme, and to evaluate the MIR training programme course content to prepare HMCAS paramedics to deal with major incident responses.
Methods: This was a quantitative cross-sectional study. A fit for purpose survey was created and then subsequently distributed to frontline operational paramedics and managers within HMCAS. Cronbach alpha was calculated to assess the survey’s reliability whilst the Mann-Whitney U test was undertaken to make a comparison between the two independent groups. IBM-SPSS® (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) Version 26 was utilized for data analysis.
Results: 307 staff with varying backgrounds of major incident understanding and training completed the survey. With the Cronbach alpha being equal to 0.653, demonstrating a satisfactory level of reliability. The results highlighted assessment responses that revealed certain deficiencies in staff knowledge (acquisition and retention) of MIR concepts. The Shewhart control chart was used to understand the level of satisfaction amongst the themes identified and results showed that satisfaction was acceptable within the control limits.
Conclusion: Training themes were subsequently identified for both in-hospital and prehospital exposure to major incidents, were skills, training format, and the understanding of the current MIR guidebook all yielded a significant association with gaps identified in the current practice. The study had also identified areas for future research in governance, standard operating procedures, technology as well as training and exercises within HMCAS.