ArticleTrauma surgery & acute care open2020
Designing and implementing a practical prehospital emergency trauma care curriculum for lay first responders in Guatemala.
Article in Trauma surgery & acute care open, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- The effect of external bleeding control training courses on lay first-person responders'knowledge, skills, and attitudes in low- and middle-income countries: a systematic review.European journal of trauma and emergency surgery : official publication of the European Trauma Society · 2025Pooled it
- Advanced responder training priorities in Kenya: A Delphi study with implications for low- and middle- income countries.African journal of emergency medicine : Revue africaine de la medecine d'urgence · 2026Article
- Police as de facto first responders in trauma systems in low- and middle-income countries: Training, governance, and the impact of insecurity.Trauma surgery & acute care open · 2026Article
- Prehospital Extremity Fracture Management in Low and Middle-Income Countries: A Scoping Review of Lay First Responders and Traditional Bonesetters.World journal of surgery · 2025Article
- Prehospital Airway Management for Trauma Patients by First Responders in Six Sub-Saharan African Countries and Five Other Low- and Middle-Income Countries: A Scoping Review.World journal of surgery · 2022Article
- Prehospital care for traumatic spinal cord injury by first responders in 8 sub-Saharan African countries and 6 other low- and middle-income countries: A scoping review.African journal of emergency medicine : Revue africaine de la medecine d'urgence · 2021Article
- Evaluating a Novel Prehospital Emergency Trauma Care Assessment Tool (PETCAT) for Low- and Middle-Income Countries in Sierra Leone.World journal of surgery · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundInjury disproportionately affects low-income and middle-income countries, yet robust emergency medical services are often lacking to effectively address the prehospital injury burden. A half-day prehospital emergency trauma care curriculum was designed for first responders and piloted in the Sacatepéquez, Chimaltenango, and Escuintla departments in Guatemala.
methodsThree hundred and fifty-four law enforcement personnel, firefighters, and civilians volunteered to participate in a 5-hour emergency care course teaching scene safety, triage, airway management, cardiopulmonary resuscitation, fracture management, and victim transport. A validated 26-question pretest/post-test study instrument was contextually adapted and used to measure overall test performance, the primary study outcome, as well as test performance stratified by occupation, the secondary study outcome. Pretest/post-test score distributions were compared using a Wilcoxon signed-rank test. For test evaluation, knowledge acquisition on a by-question and by-category basis was examined using McNemar's χ² test, whereas item difficulty indices used frequency-of-distribution tests and item discrimination indices used point biserial correlation.
resultsTwo hundred and eighty-seven participants qualified for inclusion. Participant mean pretest versus post-test scores improved 24 percentage points after course completion (43% vs 68%, p<0.001). Cronbach's alpha yielded values of 0.86 (pretest) and 0.94 (post-test), suggesting testing instrument reliability. Between-group analyses demonstrated law enforcement and civilian participants improved more than firefighters (p<0.001). Performance on 23 of 26 questions improved significantly. All test questions except one showed an increase in their PPDI. DISCUSSION: A 1-day, contextually adapted, 5-hour course targeting laypeople demonstrates significant improvements in emergency care knowledge. Future investigations of similar curricula should be trialed in alternate low-resource settings with increased civilian participation to evaluate efficacy and replicability as adequate substitutes for longer courses. This study suggests future courses teaching emergency care for lay first responders may be reduced to 5 hours duration. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level II.
Identifiers
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.