Fear, Familiarity, and the Perception of Risk: A Quantitative Analysis of Disaster-Specific Concerns of Paramedics

Abstract

<jats:title>ABSTRACT</jats:title><jats:p><jats:bold>Introduction:</jats:bold> Paramedics play an integral role in the response to and management of disasters and mass casualty events. Providing a core component of the front line response to disasters, paramedics potentially expose themselves to a variety of health and safety risks, including physical injury, death, communicable disease, and psychological effects. The health and safety risks to emergency service personnel were highlighted by the deaths of firefighters, paramedics, and police during the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, and the infection, illness, and deaths of paramedics and emergency health care staff during the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in 2003.</jats:p><jats:p><jats:bold>Objective:</jats:bold> Given that a willing and able prehospital workforce is a vital component of any successful response to a disaster situation, the present study explored paramedics' perception of risk and willingness to work, with a specific focus on identifying which type of disasters that paramedics associate with greater levels of fear, familiarity, and risk.</jats:p><jats:p><jats:bold>Methods:</jats:bold> A total of 175 paramedics completed a survey ranking 40 disaster scenarios for levels of fear and familiarity.</jats:p><jats:p><jats:bold>Results:</jats:bold> The results indicate that paramedics ranked nuclear and radiological events and outbreaks of new and highly infectious disasters highest for fear and unfamiliarity. This has implications for preparedness, education, and training.</jats:p><jats:p>(<jats:italic>Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness</jats:italic>. 2011;5:46-53)</jats:p>

When and Why Health Care Personnel Respond to a Disaster: The State of the Science

“…16,17 Several groups of researchers noted that just 45%-58% of participating HCP indicated a willingness to respond during a human-made event, such as a terrorist attack. Some PHEs are common, such as severe weather events.…”

Risk and benefit judgment of excreta as fertilizer in agriculture: An exploratory investigation in Rwanda and Uganda

“…Viau et al (2011) also stress a number of uncertainties related to public health risks associated with spreading of treated sewage sludge (biosolids) on agricultural land: namely, aspects related to: diversity of pathogen content in sewage sludge; physiological state of pathogens in biosolids and air; susceptibility of human populations; understanding of how exposure changes with movement of people and contaminants; and data used in biosolids risk assessment. Smith et al (2011) posit that risk perception plays a prominent role in the judgments and decisions people make. According to Renn and Rohrmann (2000), risk perception is a complex product of social, cultural, political, emotional, and intuitive factors.…”

Awareness of Disaster Reduction Frameworks and Risk Perception of Natural Disaster: A Questionnaire Survey among Philippine and Indonesian Health Care Personnel and Public Health Students

“…Researchers on risk perception are interested in subjective risk perception of people and its psychological mechanism (Slovic et al 1979;Smith et al 2011). Smith and his colleagues analyzed risk perception of disasters, which included both natural and technological disasters, and drew their results in a plot diagram whose axes were fear/no fear and familiar/no familiar (Smith et al 2011).…”

“…Smith and his colleagues analyzed risk perception of disasters, which included both natural and technological disasters, and drew their results in a plot diagram whose axes were fear/no fear and familiar/no familiar (Smith et al 2011). Their analysis showed comparisons between the risks perceived by people.…”