Explore pre-hospital emergency challenges in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic: A quality content analysis in the Iranian context

BACKGROUND: pre-hospital emergency is a community-oriented system that responds to the medical needs of the injured or patients with acute and emergency illnesses outside of health care facilities until they are transferred to a medical center. This study aimed to explore pre-hospital emergency challenges in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. MATERIAL AND METHODS: This study was conducted as a qualitative content analysis in Iran. Using the purposive sampling method, data were collected through in-depth individual interviews with 28 prehospital paramedic personnel from November 2020 to November 2021. Graneheim and Lundman's conventional content analysis methods were used to analyze the data and for the trustworthiness of the data, this study used Lincoln and Guba's recommendations. RESULTS: After multiple rounds of analyzing and summarizing the data and taking into consideration similarities and differences, four main categories and 10 subcategories were created based on the results of the data analysis and including (1) Culture and Community. (2) Service delivery (3) Human resources; (4) Medical supplies and equipment. CONCLUSION: According to the findings of this study emergency medical system employees are suffering from a range of psychiatric problems as a result of a lack of equipment and job overload, which has a detrimental impact on the quality of pre-hospital emergency care. Therefore, emergency care senior management should develop comprehensive guidelines, provide more equipment and minimize professional challenges to improve the quality and safety of pre-hospital emergency care services.