Abstract
Objectives: To evaluate people’s understanding on prehospital triage for the level of severity of
emergency illness in terms of interrater agreement compared with the Thai criteria-based dispatch, and
to assess the factors associated with people’s understanding. Study design: A cross-sectional survey of
Chiang Mai people’s perception on responses and management by call takers and dispatchers at the
call center of the emergency medical service. Methods: The survey asked people’s perceived priorities
by randomly selecting 4 out of 24 pre-set emergency scenarios of the Thai criteria-based dispatch triage
cases. The questionnaire also asked respondent’s characteristics, such as, education, previous experience
on emergency medical care, and related perceptional factors. Apart from descriptive statistics, Cohen’s
kappa coefficient to compare the agreement and logistic regression to explore associated factors with
agreement were analyzed. Results: A total of 102 participants responded to the survey, 62.7% were
female, median age was 25 years old (IQR = 21-37). Most of them were bachelor’s degree holders, a
38.2% agreement between people’s perceived priority and the Thai criteria-based dispatch was found
(k = 0.175, p < 0.005), with 42.9% under triage and 18.9% over triage. The percentage of agreement was
higher for non-urgency (49.5%), and semi urgency (40.8%), but lower for urgency (33.0%) and emergency
scenarios (29.0%). No factors associated with the agreement of people’s perceived priority and the prehospital
triage were found. Conclusions: People’s perceived priority did not match with the actual triage
category, and no people’s characteristics associated with prehospital triage agreement were established.
