Qualitative Research of Violent Incidents Toward Young Paramedics in the Czech Republic

Abstract

Introduction: Prehospital and emergency medical services (EMS) providers are usually the first to respond to an individual's urgent health needs, sometimes in emotionally charged circumstances. Because violence toward EMS providers in the Czech Republic is often overlooked and under-reported, we do not have a complete understanding of the extent of such violence, nor do we have recommendations from EMS professional organizations on how to resolve this problem in prehospital emergency medicine. Methods:We conducted this study to explore the process of violence against EMS providers, using the Strauss/Corbin systematic approach of grounded theory to create a paradigm model. The participants in this research included personnel who had at least two years experience in the EMS systems of the city of Prague and the Central Bohemian Region, and who had been victims of violence. Our sample included 10 registered paramedics and 10 emergency medical technicians ages 23-33 (mean ± standard deviation: 27.7). The impact of communication during EMS delivery, in the context of violence from patients or their relatives, emerged as the core category and the main focus of our study. The five main groups of the paradigm model of violence against EMS personnel included causal, contextual and intervening conditions, strategies, and consequences.Results: Of the 20 study participants, 18 reported experiencing an attack during the night shift. Ten participants experienced violence on the street, and 10 inside an ambulance. The perpetrators in all 18 cases were men. The behavior of EMS personnel plays a crucial role in how violent confrontations play out: nonprofessional behavior with drunken or addict patients increases the possibility of violence in 70% of cases. Conclusion:We found that paramedics and EMTs were exposed to verbal abuse and physical violence. However, in 10 of the violent encounters reported by our 20 participants, the attack was perpetrated by otherwise-ordinary people (ie, individuals with strong family support and good jobs) who found themselves in a very stressful situation. Thanks to grounded theory we learned that for all 20 participants there was a potential opportunity to prevent the conflict.

Self-Reported Violence Experienced by Swiss Prehospital Emergency Care Providers

“…In addition, 81% of participants were afraid to be on the scene. is must have a long-term negative effect on job satisfaction and motivation [1,[36][37][38][39]. Demotivation as well as fear at work can have a detrimental effect on medical care provided by PECPs.…”

“…In addition, the questionnaire was pretested only by a small group of people. Although their responses could not be extrapolated collectively, to other regions of Switzerland or Europe, recent studies [4][5][6][7]36,37,[40][41][42] show that workplace violence is a transversal phenomenon and that there are many similarities in the violence against healthcare providers worldwide. However, the high overall response rate, the quality of replies, and the analysis of qualitative data (by grouping of open questions, and of those with similar categorization) are strengths of this study, which remains the only one of its type to be conducted in Switzerland and one of the first in Europe.…”

Effect of sleep quality on educational performance of paramedic students of Prince Sultan Military College of Health Sciences (PSMCHS) in the Eastern Province of Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA)

“…Shockingly, very little information exists in regards to the particular impacts of de icient sleep and languor on daytime working in youngsters. Youths experience the ill effects of expanding school, family and prevalent dif iculty and from a naturally actuated deferral of sleep timing, along with changes of characteristic administrative (both circadian and homeostatic) measure [19,20] Taken together, these adjusted sleep designs lead to a checked expansion in drowsiness that generally works with intellectual, passionate, social and scholastic disappointment [1]. By the by, some exploratory proof supports the basic conviction that disturbed or helpless sleep is generally trailed by wasteful daytime conduct and changeability in execution.…”

“…By the by, some exploratory proof supports the basic conviction that disturbed or helpless sleep is generally trailed by wasteful daytime conduct and changeability in execution. Inside these exercises, scholarly execution and additionally school accomplishment ought to be painstakingly mulled over [19]. Nonetheless, barely any examinations have explored the impacts of sleep on scholarly execution utilizing college understudies as subjects rather than rudimentary or secondary school understudies [20].…”

“…Young medical students have been shown to have a high proclivity [6,7] . Various studies have been undertaken on medical students to examine sleep disruptions, and the results differ depending on their years of study and geodemographic areas [8,9] . Around 90% of Chinese medical students reported in-class daytime sleepiness, while 35.5 percent of Malaysian students reported the same, which was more common among clinical students [10][11][12].…”