ABSTRACT

Objective:

Tactical medicine training is not considered as a part of the curriculum of medical schools or emergency medicine (EM) residency programs. Shifting paradigms of war and conflict natures may require any physician to take a role as a provider in tactical settings. No standardized test or questionnaire study was found in the literature to evaluate physicians’ knowledge and awareness levels in tactical emergency medical support. The objective of this study was to develop a scale that can be used to determine the level of awareness and knowledge of EM physicians on tactical medicine.

Methods:

This was a cross-sectional study analyzing the validity and reliability of a new scale. An item pool was prepared consisting of 55 questions. Eleven experts evaluated the content validity and the scale was finalized with 28 items.

Results:

The study found that the tactical medicine knowledge and awareness scale tool is a valid and reliable measurement for assessing the knowledge and awareness of EM physicians in tactical medicine. The internal consistency of the scale was high, with a Cronbach’s α coefficient of 0.808. Confirmatory factor analysis indicated acceptable model fit, and all sub-dimensions positively influenced the total knowledge and awareness score. The results suggest the need for tactical medicine education to be integrated into medical school and EM residency curricula to improve competency in this critical field.

Conclusion:

We can conclude that this new scale proved to be a reliable measurement tool to determine the level of knowledge and awareness of EM physicians in tactical medicine.