oral presentation

1. N E W Z E A L A N D P A R A M E D I C ’ S V I E W S A N D
P E R C E P T I O N S O F T H E I R L E V E L O F
T R A I N I N G I N A S S E S S I N G A N D T R E A T I N G
M E N T A L L Y I L L P A T I E N T S .
Paramedics and Mental Illness

2. Why I chose this topic for research
 Previous ambulance encounters with patients suffering
from mental illness
 Finding great limitation in New Zealand research in
paramedic treatment of mentally ill patients
 Wanted to establish how paramedics feel
 Research Question: Do paramedics feel they have
sufficient training in assessing and treating mentally ill
patients?

3. Why I chose these methods and design
 Quantitative approach (closed answer questionnaire)
 Questionnaire for increased representativeness
 Larger sample size will enable a broad view of
current paramedics views.
 Easily quantifiable and analyzable data
 Possible forerunner for qualitative studies

4. Why I chose these methods and design
 Sample including paramedics from Basic Life
support to Advanced Life Support Level
 Only including St John Paramedics
 Systematic sampling to avoid laborious process of
simple random method (every kth number is chosen
for the sample)
 Stratification used to include paramedics from both
rural and metropolitan areas.

5. Why I chose these methods and design
 Sample size 400 paramedics
 A 50% response rate will give a sample of 5% of total
paramedics.
 Practical size for processing
 Online questionnaire to increase response rate by
ease of completion

6. Why I chose these methods and design
 To avoid different interpretation of the questions.
The questions were made clear and specific.
 “Sufficiency of training” was defined as whether or
not in their opinion the training enabled confidence
and an appropriate level of patient care.

7. How the study will analyse the data
 Multivariate analysis to establish relationship
between variables, years of experience, authority to
practice level, and rural vs metropolitan with the way
they feel about levels of training
 Univariate to gain overall proportion of paramedics
that feel training is sufficient

8. Implications for practice
 Identification of possible area of improvement in
pre-hospital patient care
 Forrunner to research establishing what training is
needed.

9. references
Babbie, E. (2008). The basic of social research 4th ed.
Belmont, Ca: Thomson Wadsorth
Order of St John. (2010). Ambulance Services.
Retrieved 1 September, 2010, from
http://www.stjohn.org.nz/products/ambulance.aspx