Public awareness of medical emergency telephone numbers: a scoping review

Prompt activation of emergency medical services (EMS) constitutes the fundamental component of bystander response to time-dependent health crises. A clear understanding of the public ability to access EMS can help to guide interventions aimed at enhancing community preparedness for emergencies. This review was conducted to summarize studies that examined public knowledge of emergency phone numbers. This scoping review encompassed articles published since 2004 that reported the proportion of subjects who knew emergency phone numbers. Data sources included PubMed, Google Scholar, and references of included articles. Relevant data from eligible publications were extracted manually to an author-developed data-charting sheet and analyzed descriptively. Forty-eight articles were analyzed. Reported studies, mostly cross-sectional surveys, were conducted in 26 countries, including 16 high-income, 9 middle-income, and 1 low-income country. The percentage of subjects who knew emergency numbers varied from 0% to 97.8% (median, 64.3%; interquartile range [IQR], 32.8%-80.0%). For high-income countries, the median was significantly higher than for low- and middle-income nations (69.6% [IQR, 54.1%-84.2%] vs. 34.6% [IQR, 19.4%-61.5%], P=0.003). The studies were generally inconsistent regarding the association of subjects' sociodemographic factors with knowledge of emergency numbers, suggesting the existence of geography-specific patterns. Available studies observed low community knowledge of emergency numbers, especially in low- and middle-income countries, and suggest that the problem has a global scale. Further research efforts are required to determine the best strategies for enhancing the public ability to access EMS.