Knowledge, Attitude and Practices in Management of Trauma Victims: A Questionnaire Based Study

Background: Trauma care represents a challenge to clinicians managing trauma patients. With standard trauma care protocols such as ATLS in place, it is important to acquire and adopt protocol based knowledge and implement it the routine management of trauma patients. It is clinician’s responsibility to participate in such programs and update their knowledge and hence improve their practices. Aims: In this cross sectional study among clinicians we aim to evaluate their knowledge of trauma management protocols, practices based on such knowledge in the management of trauma patients and attitude towards acquiring this knowledge by attending standard trauma teaching programs. Methods: This study was conducted by distributing questionnaires among 83 doctors across various hospitals. Those respondents who had scored ≥ 10 were considered to have adequate knowledge of management of trauma patients and were used in analyzing correct response rate. The results were analyzed statistically by applying the Fischer-exact test or Chi- square test. Results: The overall correct response rate for the study was 25%. The statistical correlation (p-value) for the correct response rate among clinicians with clinical experience of more or less than 5 yrs; whether routinely managing trauma patients or not and whether or not working in a trauma centre were 0.53, 1.00, 0.29 respectively. The p value for correlation of correct response rate among clinicians who had attended structured trauma course and those who had not was 0.00. Conclusion: The exposure to standard trauma teaching programs improves the knowledge and hence knowledge based practices of clinicians for trauma victims’ management.