Emergency Medicine: Open Access

Emergency Medicine: Open Access
Open Access

ISSN: 2165-7548

Editorial - (2016) Volume 6, Issue 4

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Necessity of Increasing Elderly Population Awareness about Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Tabriz, Iran

Akbar Azizi Zeinalhajlou1, Roozbeh Rajaie Ghafouri2 and Hassan Soleimanpour3*
1Health Service Management Research Centre, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
2Emergency Medicine Research Team, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
3Road Trac Injury Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran
*Corresponding Author: Hassan Soleimanpour, Road Traffic Injury Research Center, Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran Email:

Editorial

Parallel to the growingly increasing rate in elderly populations, demands for care and health services seem to be rapidly augmenting [1]. Elderly patients highly require and use Emergency Medical Services (EMS) [2-5], that demand more needed resources of EMS [3,6,7] and they often arrive by ambulance to the hospitals in developed countries [7-10]. Existing evidences indicate that, in Tabriz, a small proportion of patients in hospital emergency departments are dispatched to use EMS. The first report of conducted study in Tabriz among people aged 60 or more showed the dominated unawareness about EMS, terms of EMS use, EMS phone number, and its free services among Iranian elderly people [11]. As demonstrated, one obstacle regarding services use is the lack of awareness about such services [12]. While, there is a high correlation between awareness and use of service [13]. Due to the high rate of illiteracy (more than 60%) [14] and low public awareness among elderly in Tabriz, they do not have proper understanding about EMS and its terms of using that leads them to not conveniently demand some of their essential services. Therefore, to draw attention and to increase awareness about the present services among elderly population seems incumbent. In conclusion, to increase the efficiency of provided services, a particular and multi-dimensional attention should be paid in to the processes, social context, social conditions of target groups, and even apparently settled issues.

Competing Interests

The author(s) declare that they have no competing interest.

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Citation: Zeinalhajlou AA, Ghafouri RR, Soleimanpour H (2016) Necessity of Increasing Elderly Population Awareness about Emergency Medical Services (EMS) Tabriz, Iran. Emerg Med (Los Angel) 6: e145.

Copyright: © 2016 Zeinalhajlou AA, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License; which permits unrestricted use; distribution; and reproduction in any medium; provided the original author and source are credited.
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