Priority directions for improving medical support for employees of internal affairs bodies of Russian Federation in emergency conditions of professional activities: descriptive cross-cross-case empirical study

INTRODUCTION. With the increasing intensity and diversity of emergency situations faced by law enforcement personnel, ensuring effective and continuous medical support is becoming a priority for departmental healthcare. Current medical care mechanisms often fail to meet the requirements of efficiency, mobility, and interdepartmental coordination. The lack of digital solutions, insufficient equipment, and staffing shortages exacerbate the system’s vulnerability in an unstable operational environment. This necessitates a strategic rethinking of the organizational, personnel, and technological foundations for medical care delivery within the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs. OBJECTIVE. Identification of priority areas for improving the system of medical support for employees of the internal affairs bodies of the Russian Federation in emergency situations of professional activity based on an analysis of the opinions of the heads of departmental medical organizations using text data clustering methods. MATERIALS AND METHODS. The empirical basis of the study consisted of the results of a questionnaire survey of 408 heads of departmental medical institutions of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia. The geographic coverage included all federal districts, ensuring a representative sample. The survey included 13 questions, including open-ended ones, subject to semantic analysis. Intelligent text processing methods were used: TF-IDF vectorization, K-Means clustering, lemmatization, stop word removal, PCA visualization, and cosine similarity calculation. Quantitative data were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The volume of analyzed texts was 408 open-ended responses; the data collection period was October–November 2024. Key words for semantic processing included: digitalization, emergency assistance, training, logistics, tactical medicine, etc. RESULTS. An analysis of the questionnaires revealed three key conceptual clusters: 1) digitalization and telemedicine; 2) organizational and resource support; 3) training of medical personnel, including tactical medicine. Among the main problems, respondents identified the lack of a systematic approach (32.8%), a shortage of personnel training (29.9%), and poor drug provision (27.2%). Equipment modernization was supported by 87.9% of respondents, the need to create a unified information system by 67.7%, and emergency care reform by 65%. A persistent desire for systemic transformation in the digital, organizational, and educational areas was revealed. DISCUSSION. The obtained results confirm the presence of persistent problems previously noted in the studies of A. P. Ovcharenko et al. (2023), E. G. Ichitovkina et al. (2025), P. E. Krainyukov et al. (2021). According to international data (B. Hogan et al., 2020; WHO, 2020), the high significance of digital solutions and telemedicine was revealed. Domestic studies emphasize the importance of training a new type of specialists: management-oriented, proficient in tactical medicine. The interdisciplinary nature of the problems is confirmed by a moderate overlap of topics between clusters. This reflects the maturity of the respondents’ management thinking and the system’s potential for comprehensive transformation. CONCLUSION. The study revealed a high level of management awareness of the problems and a clearly formulated demand for strategic modernization of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs’ departmental healthcare system. Key areas of focus include digitalization, development of tactical medicine, and improved emergency logistics. The findings can be used as the basis for programmatic and regulatory decisions as part of a systemic reform of medical support for police officers in emergency situations.

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