Citation

Hernandez-Sanchez M, Valdes-Lazo F, Garcia Roche R. Proc. Road Saf. Four Continents Conf. 2007; 14: 7p.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2007, Conference Sponsor)

DOI

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PMID

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Abstract

Road traffic injuries constitute a worldwide health problem because they are an important cause of mortality, morbidity, sequels, human suffering, years of potential life lost and economic costs. In Cuba, road traffic injuries comprise the fifth cause of general mortality and the first of mortality from 1 to 34 years of age. It is precisely the need to increase the preparation of specialists from different community sectors and disciplines that pave the way to this work, because their appropriate preparation is an important support to increase the knowledge in other people for preventing injuries. The intervention study was carried out with 155 specialists from different community sectors and disciplines (health, education, jurists, mass organizations, traffic police and others), through 6 regional courses for the different provinces in the country. The knowledge that the participants had on road traffic injuries and the activities they had prepared to prevent them in the communities were measured with an initial questionnaire designed to this purpose. After that, a training plan was imparted and at the end, knowledge was measured again to observe its variation. The indicators were percentages, average and standard deviation. The participants referred that for road traffic injuries prevention they carried out bigger number of educational activities during meetings with the community, followed by patient's consultations and home visits. At the beginning, 76,1 per cent of the participants considered themselves ready to prevent road traffic injuries (78,6 per cent among medical doctors, 83,7 among nurses and 58,6 per cent among other professions). However, only 46,4 per cent passed the initial test (52,8 per cent among medical doctors, 40,5 per cent among nurses and 34,4 per cent among other professions). After the training plan, the amount of people who passed the final test increased to 94,8 per cent. The training plan was profitable because the knowledge on road traffic injuries prevention in specialists from different community sectors and disciplines was highly and rapidly increased, in order to spread the acquired knowledge in their action areas.