RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access Traffic police officers’ experience of post- crash care to road traffic injury victims: a qualitative study in Tanzania” Gift G. Lukumay 1* , Anne H. Outwater 1 , Dickson A. Mkoka 2 , Menti L. Ndile 2 and Britt-Inger Saveman 3 Abstract Background: Recently, road traffic injuries (RTIs) have become a major health problem affecting health systems in many low- and middle-income countries. Regardless of whether an ambulance is available for evacuation, police officers have been shown to arrive at the crash scene first, becoming, in effect, the first responders to RTI victims. Therefore, the study aimed to explore the experiences of traffic police officers in regard to the provision of care to RTI victims in the prehospital environment, including the role of traffic police upon arriving at the crash scene, the challenges they face, and their opinions about how to improve care to RTI victims. Method: The study used a qualitative approach in which data were obtained from 10 individual interviews and three focus group discussions. There were 41 participants, 27 of them were male and 14 were female. About half (48.7%) of the study participants were aged between 30 to 39 years. Qualitative content analysis was used to analyse all the materials. Results: Three themes emerged from the analysis. The theme “Maintain safety while saving injured victims’ lives and facilitating access to a health facility” was comprised of safety, sorting, initial help, and assisting access to hospital care. “Overwhelmed working with limited resources and support” included limited care and transport resources, police fatigue, and little or no support. “Improving supportive system and empowering frontline personnel” included the need for an emergency care system, availability of resources and an emergency medical support system, and training for police and drivers regarding victims’ first-aid care, and road safety. Conclusion: The study findings characterize an environment in which the police first responders have no knowledge or skills and no equipment and supplies to provide care to RTI victims at the scene before rushing them to definitive care. The results suggest a favorable climate for training and equipping officers so that they can deliver competent postcrash care at the scene while emergency medical services are yet to be established. However, more research will be needed to determine the efficacy of such training and its acceptability in the Tanzanian context. Keywords: Post-crash care experience, Qualitative method, Road traffic injury, Traffic police Background Road traffic injuries (RTIs) have become a major health problem in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) [1]. RTI is the leading cause of injury death, worldwide, among those ages 15–29 years [2, 3]. This is in part because road transport is the main mode of transport worldwide [4]. In Tanzania, the site of the present study, road transport accounts for three quarters of all types of transport [5]. Because most economic activities involve movement from one place to another, people in the economically active age groups have increased exposure to RTIs. The impact of RTIs on economic development is sub- stantial. The increased number of deaths and disabilities among people of reproductive age has become a global public concern [1, 6–8]. Disabilities from injuries always interfere with victims’ economic activities and affects their overall quality of life [9]. Furthermore, victims who © The Author(s). 2019 Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. * Correspondence: giftgadiel@yahoo.com 1 Department of Community Health Nursing, Muhimbili University of Health and Allied Sciences (MUHAS), Dar es Salaam, Tanzania Full list of author information is available at the end of the article Lukumay et al. BMC Emergency Medicine (2019) 19:51 https://doi.org/10.1186/s12873-019-0274-x