Assessment of First Aid Knowledge among Adult Residents of Lahore: A Descriptive Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Background: First aid is an important life-saving technique that gives immediate first aid attention until professional help arrives. Poor first aid skills of adults may result in a late response to the emergency and may also make things worse. The present study tested the level of knowledge regarding First Aid among the adult residents of Lahore, to discover the gaps in their knowledge and to provide an assistance to future first aid education programs.

Methodology: Methodology used for this study was descriptive cross-sectional that involved 138 adult people residing in Lahore, Pakistan. The participants were obtained by using the convenience sampling technique in age group 18 years and above. A structured interviewer administered questionnaire containing 15 multiple choice questions on first aid knowledge and demographic characteristics was used to collect data. The analysis of the data used was carried out by the software package IBM SPSS Statistics version 27.0. The data was summarized using descriptive statistics namely mean and standard deviations, frequencies, and percentages. Since comparing levels of knowledge on providing first aid with selected demographics was like a chi square analysis, Pearson's Chi-square Test was used for this comparison at a p value of 0.05.

Results: 138 subjects participated in the study. The majority (42.8%) were aged 26–40 years, 50.7% were female, and 58.7% were married. The overall result is that 54.3% of the participants had moderate knowledge, 23.2% had poor knowledge and 22.5% of them had good knowledge. Overall level of knowledge was 1.99 ± 0.68. No statistically significant associations were observed between first aid knowledge and age (χ² = 6.787, p = 0.341), gender (χ² = 2.983, p = 0.225), marital status (χ² = 0.891, p = 0.989), or educational level (χ² = 16.465, p = 0.087).

Conclusion: The proportions of the adult residents of Lahore who had moderate and or low levels of first aid knowledge were also quite similar with no significant relationships between knowledge and the selected receiving demographic characteristics. The results emphasize the importance of first aid education and awareness creation on the preparedness and emergency response of the public.