Promising ways to raise public awareness of first aid rules

Introduction. The ability of an eyewitness to provide immediate and correct first aid to a victim is a key factor of increasing the chances of a favorable outcome in various life­threatening conditions. Informing the population about the importance of the first aid, teaching the necessary algorithms of these actions, and introducing targeted mobile applications can significantly increase the frequency and quality of the first aid. The aim of the study is to examine the main sources of information about the first aid and to identify perspective directions for increasing public awareness in this problem. Materials and methods of the study are based on anonymous questionnaire survey among fuel and energy complex workers of the Republic of Belarus i n January­June 2023, which was conducted with the questionnaire «Awareness of First Aid». The survey involved 894 respondents without medical education. The survey helped to determine the coverage of respondents by the first aid trainings, to understand their awareness of the first aid, and to realize the main and prospective sources of information about the first aid. Methods of nonparametric statistics were used to analyze the results. Results. According to the survey results, 93.5% of respondents are familiar with the basic rules of the first aid; 86,8% were trained; 9.7% studied independently. Additional sources of information about the first aid include visual information — 41.5%, first Aid training publications — 30.6%, social networks — 27.6%, and the information from the social environment — 22.0%. Respondents considered the prioritizing sources of information about first aid, which are included visual agitation (37.1%), smart programs «First aid» (35.6%), handouts (25.6%), unified training manual «First aid» (26.2%), etc. According to the respondents, awareness about first aid could be facilitated by wide media coverage (27.0%), introduction of a compulsory training discipline «First Aid» (18.7%), creation of national digital content about first aid (10.9%), compulsory trainings (9.9%). However, the existing educational publications do not have a unified algorithm of first aid and do not support the motivation to render first aid (only 44.1% of respondents consider themselves as full participants of first aid), it also contains outdated or inadmissible recommendations. Conclusions. The creation of a unified information environment «First Aid» can be an important option for increasing public awareness of the first aid. This information environment could solve the following problems -like increasing the motivation of population to training the first aid, like unification of this training and like implementation the first aid training through the mobile technologies.