Public awareness of telephone number for medical emergencies: a scoping review.

Abstract

Objectives: Prompt activation of emergency medical services (EMS) constitutes the fundamental component of bystander response to time-dependent health crises. A clear understanding of the public ability to access EMS may help to guide interventions aimed at enhancing community preparedness for emergencies. This review was conducted to summarise studies that examined public knowledge of emergency phone numbers.

Methods: The scoping review encompassed articles published since 2004 that reported the proportion of subjects who knew emergency phone numbers. Data sources included PubMed, Google Scholar and references of included articles. Relevant data from eligible publications were extracted manually to an author-developed data-charting sheet and analysed descriptively.

Results: Forty-eight articles were analysed. Reported studies, mostly cross-sectional surveys, were conducted in 26 countries, including 16 high-income, nine middle-income and one low-income country. The percentage of subjects who knew emergency numbers varied from 0.0 to 97.8 (median [interquartile range]: 64.3 [32.8-80.0]). For developed countries, it was significantly higher than for developing nations (69.6 [54.1-84.2] and 34.6 [19.4-61.5], respectively; p=0.003). The studies were generally inconsistent regarding the association of subjects' socio-demographic factors with knowledge of emergency numbers, suggesting the existence of geography-specific patterns.

Conclusions: Available studies observed low community knowledge of emergency numbers, especially in developing countries, and suggest that the problem has a global scale. Further research efforts are required to determine the best strategies for enhancing the public ability to access EMS.