Abstract

Scene time (time at the scene) is one of the performance indices for pre-hospital emergency system, and is defined as the time interval in which an emergency technician reaches a scene, provide the emergency medical services, and leaves the scene. The present study was performed to examine the relationship between job characteristics of emergency medical technicians and scene time in traumatic injuries. Data were collected from 45 emergency medical technicians in Mashhad, North-east of Iran. To evaluate job characteristics of the technicians, “John Wagner’s job cognition questionnaire” was used. The scene time was specified using “time scene information form” and for each technician, a mean score of three scene time was calculated to get a more precise estimate of the scene time. Data were analyzed using Pearson’s correlation coefficient and Mann Whitney U test. The findings reveal that there is a significant correlation between technicians’ job characteristics and scene time (r = -0.28). Three variables, that is, skill diversity (r = -0.44), job importance (r = -0.37), and taking feedback (r = -0.34), showed a significant relationship with scene time. No significant relationship between demographic variables and scene time was observed. Decreasing scene time is one of the key indices of pre-hospital emergency system’s performance which is achievable through increasing motivation of employees by considering their job’s characteristics. The results of the present study show that the investigated technicians do not have an ideal feeling about their job’s identity. This can have a negative effect on their performance, especially scene time.

Key words: Job characteristics, scene time, emergency medical technicians, traumatic injuries