Social and Professional Network
Teaching and assessing professional behaviours for paramedics
Still teaching and assessing EMTs professional behaviours taking agreat concern from all over the world EMS institutes. The issue of medical professionalism has invade the curriculum of EMS due to the importants of prehospital care specialty to society. In such setting the paramedic have less supervision and pass through difficult circumstances where he need to take a critical decicions. If paramedic school didnt equipped him with a set of professional behaviours he will not be able to face the ethical challanges and will bring blame to himself and harm the reputation of his organization. Her we can see why health schools or paramedic schools should encourage and deveop methods to enhance paramedic professionalism through diffrent activity such as preparing portfolio, ethical dilemma case studies, and role plays. Beside thats using a wide spectrum of assessment methods could be wise to make sure that paramedic attains right professional attributes. Peer assessment, observation, mini scenario excersise are some of those methods can be used for assessment.All those methods has a different degree of sychometric validity and reliability,hence, you must know which method will be easy to apply to your students.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Skip Kirkwood on -
Do we have an agreed-upon definition of the "professional behaviors" expected of paramedics?
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Permalink Reply by Ahmed Abdullah AL Harbi on
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Hi Mr.Skip sure there is no specific definition for health-care professionalism but sure thier is a set of professional behaviours; elements and domains attributes to professionalsim.Her some of professionalism definitions:
Professionalism: a set of values, behaviors, and relationships that underpins the trust of the public has in doctors (The Royal college of Medicine.2005)
Professionalism: constituting those attitudes and behaviors that serve to maintain patient interest above physician self-interest (The American Board of Internal Medicine1994).
I have included a part of my master degree which was on paramedic professionalism the part which talk about professionalsim definition please see below;
What is professionalism
Arnold (2002) mention that the concept of professionalism is circumscribed with specific elements. Definitions, empirically and prospectively derived, abound.
It is obviously noted that the elements of professionalism has been set differently from one institute to other and from one professional organization to other, even though there is analogy in these elements among professional organizations. For instance, the American Board of Internal Medicine (ABIM1994), the Society of American Emergency Medicine (Adams et al 1998), and the Accreditation Council of on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME1999), have defined professionalism prospectively and have semi-consensus on the elements that encircle professionalism (Arnold2002).
These elements are: altruism; respect for other people; additional humanistic qualities; honor, integrity, ethical and moral standards; accountability; excellence; and duty/advocacy (ABIM.1994, Adams et al .1998, and ACGME.1999).
Stern(2006) suggests that one approach to develop a definition of professionalism is to look for universal values among physicians. He suggests that “core values of professionalism derived from the universality of disease and begin with caring or compassion. Caring over time create the value of responsibility .The shared responsibility constructs trust and respect by both physician and patient. The maintenance of trust demands integrity and confidentiality. The Humanistic values are considered core to practice of medicine are thus biologically grounded in the nature of disease and the natural emotional connections between individuals". Beside those humanistic core values , other values has developed over time such service, maintenance of competence, autonomy, and self –regulation"(Stern2006, page17).
Stern(2006) state that the efforts by physicians and medical educators along with social scientists and ethicists suggest the following definition for assessment of professionalism .
"Professionalism is demonstrated through a foundation of clinical competence, communication skills, and ethical and legal understanding, upon which is built the aspiration to and wise application of the principles of professionalism: excellence, humanism, accountability, and altruism ". Figure 1
Through his definition Stern(2006) has points to several fundamental elements of knowledge and skills that are necessary but not sufficient for professionalism-clinical competence, ethical understanding, and communication skills.
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Permalink Reply by Skip Kirkwood on
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I agree with that. What I'm hoping for is something that is specific to EMS personnel.
While what we do when in contact with patients is medicine, the process of development is vastly different than the development process for physicians - so if we want to develop professional behaviors, we have to identify specifically what we think that they are.
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yes, EMS oranizations need to get together to sum-up and agree upon pre-hospital care set of professional behaviours that might be taught and assessed. The specialty of EMS is really unique and need the contribution of the EMS themself to adress the ethical and behavioural delimmas and this should be in association with different parties such emergency medicine presentators and EMS educators and EMS Professional organizations.
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Permalink Reply by Jeff on -
In the Paramedic program that I teach in, we created a code of conduct that was based on the 12 areas of professionalism outlined in the 1998 National Standard Curriculum for EMT-Paramedic. The code of conduct is explained to the students during their first orientation before beginning the program and they are assessed on how well the follow it throughout the program. Part of the evaluation for each clinical or field rotation includes a section on professionalism that is based on the code of conduct. If the student acts in a way that violates the code of conduct, they must complete a remediation plan in order to continue in the program. The student meets with two faculty members who explain to the student why the behavior is unacceptable and the student is given specific actions that he or she must take to demonstrate that they have learned. They are given an opportunity to explain their actions as a part of the discussion. Hope this helps.
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very good Jeff, presenting the professionalism in the beginning of EMS programme is a useful thing to do, but what and how to teach professionalism and what methods we use to reinforce professionalism.Finally, attitude and behaviours is hard to evaluate so, it needs for relibilty matter to be done through using different ways to be assessed and from more than one evaluators through diffrent accations.
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