| Sub-title | |
| Author | M. Spiteri |
| Abstract | Objectives: To establish a baseline of current provision of state ambulance service in Malta. Methods: A retrospective study of the year 2001, which data was used to establish the distribution of ambulance workload across Malta. A second part of the study included one hundred calls taken at random during the years 2002-2003, which were studied into further detail to establish current performance levels. Results: The study shows that the heavy workload with which our service has to cope, is equally distributed across the months and days of the year, and is mainly localised around the central part of Malta. Although the number of calls remains the same across different seasons, it was noted that the percentage of emergency calls increases during the summer months. The study also shows that the service, which is being provided to the immediate surroundings of the hospital, is adequate. However, our emergency ambulances fail to meet an eight-minute target, call to response time, for most of the island. Most of these delays originate from within the hospital grounds itself, where a precious four minutes are lost in trying to set up a team to respond to an emergency. As a result, only 19% of emergency calls are answered on time. Conclusions: This study highlights the urgent need of a pre-hospital care department, whose role would be that of designing a new ambulance system that is adequate to meet with todays needs. One major challenge would be that or transforming the system into a well coordinated multi-centre dispatch one, which is run by adequately run personnel who are able to give urgent help to whoever needs it. |
Published in: | |
| Journal | Malta Medical Journal |
| Volume | 15 Issue 1-2/suppl. 2003 |
| Pages | - |
| Date | |
| Link to journal | |
| Key words | ambulance service, pre-hospital care |