An Exploration of the Effects that Frequent Exposure to Life-threatening Events may have on a Critical Care Paramedic’s Psychological Wellbeing

Abstract

Rescue Team) members and their families were for the next disaster. Background: Turkey is a land of earthquakes and a major earthquake in the Marmara region is expected in the near future. Despite this fact, people, including volunteer disaster workers, have low levels of awareness regarding risks and have limited interest in preparedness. Methods: This is a descriptive cross-sectional study, and the study participants were the UMKE (Ulusal Medikal Kurtarama Ekibi -National Medical Rescue Team) members working in the Marmara region. UMKEs are volunteer medical rescue teams. Data collection tools were a questionnaire involving socio-demographic information, and a Disaster Preparedness Checklist (Tezgider et al, 2013). Results: A total of 105 volunteers participated in the study. Of them 53 (50,5%) were women and 52 were (49,5%) men. The mean age was 32 29 ± 7 19; 55 (52,4%) of the participants had personally experienced a disaster, and 62 (59%) worked actively in a disaster. The most common preparedness activities that the participants have taken were; learning the phone numbers of emergency services (N = 96, 91,4%), knowing local institutions providing information about disaster preparedness (N = 95, 90,5%), having information about residential usage license of current residence (N = 95, 90,5%). The least common preparedness activities were; obtaining information on disaster preparedness activities of neighborhood units (N = 82, 78,1), obtaining information on disaster preparedness activities of district governorship (N = 82, 78,1), obtaining information regarding disaster preparedness activities of the municipality (N = 78, 74,3%). Conclusion: These findings indicate that, although volunteers are highly motivated to engage in rescue activities as a 'saver', neither them, or their families are interested in disaster risk reduction in pre-disaster period.