Anticipated behaviors of emergency prehospital medical care providers during an influenza pandemic.

Introduction: Emergency prehospital medical care providers are frontline health workers during emergencies. However, little is known about their attitudes, perceptions, and likely behaviors during emergency conditions. Understanding these attitudes and behaviors is crucial to mitigating the psychological and operational effects of biohazard events such as pandemic influenza, and will support the business continuity of essential prehospital services.

Attitudes to living and working in pandemic conditions among emergency prehospital medical care personnel.

Introduction: Little is known about the risk perceptions and attitudes of healthcare personnel, especially of emergency prehospital medical care personnel, regarding the possibility of an outbreak or epidemic event.

Problem: This study was designed to investigate pre-event knowledge and attitudes of a national sample of the emergency prehospital medical care providers in relation to a potential human influenza pandemic, and to determine predictors of these attitudes.

Methods: Surveys were distributed to a random, cross-sectional sample of 20% of the Australian emergency prehospital medical care workforce (n = 2,929), stratified by the nine services operating in Australia, as well as by gender and location.