Physicians based emergency medical services for the management of burn injuries in trauma centers of the center region of Saudi Arabia: evaluation of physicians' knowledge and experience.

Background: Medical services at trauma centers regularly encounter severe burn patients but prehospital care of these patients in Saudi Arabia is comparatively unexplored. This study evaluates the knowledge and experience of physicians working in trauma centers of Qassim province of Saudi Arabia for the management of patients with burn injuries.

Methods: This is a cross sectional study performed on 204 physicians working in the trauma centers of Qassim province. Physicians' knowledge and experience were assessed via administration of validated questionnaires and the data were analyzed using SPSS software.

Results: Among total studied physicians, only 35.3% and 24.0% gave the right answer to the question on the diagnosis of burn skin in depth/extent for adults and pediatric patients, respectively. Importantly, 93.6% physicians responded correctly for first aid treatment. For the parkland concept, 62.2% responded correctly, however, only 22.5% understand the colloid fluid concept. The 74% physicians knew the methods of fluid revival for mass burn injuries and about half of studied physicians showed right knowledge for intubation for breathing for mass burn injuries. Only 47.5% physicians understand the concept of electrolyte disorder.

Conclusions: This is the first study from the central region of Saudi Arabia that analyzed the knowledge and experience of physicians working in trauma centers for the management of patients with burn injuries. Overall data showed that ~60% physicians working in trauma centers have knowledge for handling the patients with burn injuries but the rest needed counseling, therefore proper training sessions for them are needed for management of burn patients.