Moving Toward a Universal Digital Era in Mass Casualty Incidents and Disasters: Emergency Personnel's Perspective in Romania.

Abstract

Despite a recognized need for improved communications and logistics in high acuity situations, the integration of telemedicine services into the mainstream health services has been difficult. This study reports on the opinions of Romanian professional responders to mass casualty incidents and disasters regarding the use and requirements of specific electronic medical documentation solutions. Doctors, nurses, paramedics, and fire department officers participated in a customized online structured questionnaire. To assess factors associated with the current use of information technology and the willingness to adopt an exclusive optimized electronic system, a multivariate analysis was performed. Logistic regression was used for free input key elements regarding the most useful technical and operative improvements and medical documentation solutions for large-scale events. A total of 536 respondents provided answers between the second half of the year 2014 and the first half of the year 2015. Doctors and nurses were the most frequent users of documentation techniques, especially if they were employed at a high-level emergency care center. Professionals' duties were perceived as increasingly impaired by the use of current electronic systems as those duties became more complex. All respondents favored an optimized large-scale event electronic solution, emphasizing the need for enhanced communications, technical equipment, cooperation, and workflow mainly by integrating mobile devices, dedicated software, remote databases, and interlink capabilities. Professionals support the implementation of an integrated electronic system for large-scale events if outlined requirements are met to maximize user acceptance.