Factors affecting response time of emergency ambulance service except for traffic congession in Ankara province

Every step in the first minutes following the occurrence of the incident requiring emergency care means choosing between life and death in the pre-hospital emergency health services and disasters. Response time, the period until ambulance arrives the case, is a term used to determine arrival speed of pre-hospital emergency health care services to the patient. In this study, factors affecting the ambulance response time apart from the traffic were examined and it was aimed to determine the factors that extend the access to the cases and to contribute to improvement process of these factors. Study was designed on two groups in 112 Emergency Health Care Service in Ankara Province. The first group of participants was the directors of Ankara Emergency Health Care Stations who were questioned about their experiences about the factors affecting access to the patient / injured. Besides, the factors affecting the ambulance response time through disaster scenarios were questioned. Second group of participants were the team directors of stations selected by convenience sampling and the cases within 24-hour-duty were taken as samples. According to responses of first group three most important factors were reporting incorrect address, unreadable building numbers and barriers of gardens. Negative factors were reported more in the second group (Case numbers: 202, positive factors: 29, negative factors:110). The most common reported positive factor was the bystander that directing team to the address. The most common negative factors were reporting incorrect address and bad road-weather conditions when excluding traffic. It was also questioned whether there was a need for first aid in cases and if so, whether it was applied. It was determined that first aid was not applied to %74.8 of the cases in need. Public trainings should be planned in order to eliminate reporting incorrect address, which is the most common negative factor. In open field cases, dispatcher should collaborate for getting the most accurate address with closed-ended questions. The building numbers should be in standard shape and size and placed in visible position. Controls should be augmented in frame with related regulation. The current first aid training should be reviewed and different training models should be considered. In the surveys conducted on possible disaster scenarios, the most frequent factor affecting the response time of the ambulance at the time of disaster in a central area was chaos at the scene, and the most frequent factor affecting the response time of the ambulance in a disaster was found to be damaged and closed roads in a peripheral area. Due to the high number of casualties, the provision of emergency health services may be disrupted in natural and man-made disasters. It is thought that these factors can be solved through disaster drills and community awareness programs about disaster situations.