Psychological Distress in Emergency Medical Services Practitioners: Identifying and Measuring the Issues
Abstract
This thesis investigates psychological distress in Emergency Medical Services practitioners through three pieces of inter-related research. The first examines the prevalence of compassion fatigue in all health care practitioners by systematic review of literature. The second conceptualizes three manifestations of distress (compassion fatigue, burnout, and post-traumatic stress disorder), places them in the context of EMS work by describing practitioners’ experience, and broadly strategizes ways to address them. The third measures the presence of compassion fatigue, burnout, and post-traumatic stress disorder in a sample of EMS practitioners through a survey based study. Overall, the research showed that EMS practitioners are experiencing psychological distress as compassion fatigue, burnout and PTSD, and that compassion fatigue has been identified across diverse practitioner groups in health care. Recommendations are consistently made that further research needs to be conducted to investigate root causes, and that education and support programs would be of benefit to practitioners.
Description
Keywords
Medicine and Surgery, Mental Health, Occupational Health and Safety
Citation
Lefevre, N. L. (2017). Psychological Distress in Emergency Medical Services Practitioners: Identifying and Measuring the Issues (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/27476