Objective  To understand the main factors affecting the pre-hospital first aid ability of community health service centers at the grass -roots level, and to propose the targeted improvement strategies.

  Methods  Totally 127 health professionals from 3 community health service centers in an urban area of Qingyang City were studied. A field questionnaire survey was conducted to understand their pre -hospital first aid abilityand the training and learning experience, while the basic data of each community health service center were collected. The factors influencing the prehospital first aid ability were analyzed by ordinal logistic regression model.

  Results  The construction scale of these three community health service centers has not yet reached the standard announced by the government. No emergency department was set up and only part of conventional first -aid equipment were equipped in these three service centers. Totally 122 health technical personnel completed fully the questionnaires with recovery rate of 96.06%. Among these, 59.1% were nursing personnel, 61.5% received college education, and 63.1% had primary professional title. There was no significant difference in education, professional title, age and service time of health technicians in these three community health service centers(P > 0.05)；95.0% health technicians participated in the emergency professional knowledge training, mostly focusing on first aid knowledge and accounting for 86.7% to 96.6% of training experience. There was variance of percentage of self-reported mastery of different knowledge and/or skills (P < 0.05).The percentage of self-reported full mastery of vital sign detection, cardiopulmonary resuscitation technology and wound treatment was 57.4%, 40.2% and 34.4%, respectively, while only 27.0% for fracture fixation technology, 20.5% for acute poisoning treatment, and 17.2% for the use of first -aid equipment. The top three knowledge and skills which the professional wanted to learn were the use of emergency equipment (89.3%), wound treatment technology (88.5%) and acute poisoning treatment (87.7%). The logistic regression analysis showed that believing in need of pre -hospital first aid (OR = 7.576) and participating in special training on first aid (OR = 25.179)were the promoting factors for full competent (P < 0.05).

  Conclusions  The first -aid facilities in the community health service centers at the grass -roots level are insufficient, and the professional ability of medical technicians in first -aid needs to be improved. The government needs to strengthen its leading role, strengthen various forms of emergency capacity training, scientifically plan the city's emergency medical resources, and stabilize the grass-roots emergency personnel team.