Knowledge Base of Doctors and Nurses Participating in a Trauma Workshop

Abstract

Objective To identify the knowledge base of doctors and nurses attending a trauma workshop. Methods: All participants of a trauma workshop were distributed a pre-test questionnaire with 30 type A questions. Questions on patient assessment and the management of airway, breathing and circulation were included. Scores were analysed with regard to the specialty and years since graduation. The difficulty and discrimination indices of individual question were analysed. Results 95 participants (33 were doctors) took the test. The participants were from the departments of surgery (41%), orthopaedics (24%), anaesthesia (20%) and emergency medicine (9%). The mean years from graduation of the participants were 3.22 (SD 3.77) for doctors and 3.56 (SD 6.06) for nurses. The mean score was 54% (SD 17%) for the whole group. The mean score of doctors was 68%, which was significantly higher than the nurses' score of 46%. (P<0.001) The mean score of Emergency Department doctors (82%) was highest among the four groups but the differences were not statistically significant. Non-surgical trainees (anaesthesia, emergency medicine) had statistically significant better scores than surgical trainees (surgery, orthopaedics, neurosurgery) in airway (p = 0.02) and breathing (p = 0.03) There were no statistically significant differences among the four doctor groups in the other sub-scores. For the doctors, only 3 questions had a correct response rate of less than 40%. On the contrary, for the nurse group, 13 questions attracted a correct response rate of less than 40%. Conclusions A pre-test was useful in helping us understand more about the knowledge base of different groups of participants.