Evaluation of change in emergency care knowledge and skills among front-line healthcare providers in Ukraine with the Basic Emergency Care course: a pretest/post-test study

Objective Evaluate the change in participant emergency care knowledge and skill confidence after implementation of the WHO-International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) Basic Emergency Care (BEC) course.Design Pretest/post-test quasi-experimental study.Setting Mechnikov Hospital in Dnipro, Ukraine.Participants Seventy-nine participants engaged in the course, of whom 50 (63.3%) completed all assessment tools. The course was open to healthcare providers of any level who assess and treat emergency conditions as part of their practice. The most common participant profession was resident physician (24%), followed by health educator (18%) and prehospital provider (14%).Interventions The 5-day WHO-ICRC BEC course.Primary and secondary outcome measures Change in pre-course and post-course knowledge and skill confidence assessments. Open-ended written feedback was collected upon course completion and analysed for common themes.Results Participant knowledge assessment scores improved from 19 (IQR 15–20) to 22 (IQR 19–23) on a 25-point scale (p