Finnish paramedics’ professional quality of life and associations with assignment experiences and defusing use – a cross-sectional study
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Background: Paramedics experience traumatic events and social emergencies during assignments while also being subjected to verbal and physical threats. Consequently, they are at risk for burnout and secondary traumatic stress, factors inherent to professional quality of life. Defusing and peer-support potentially decrease such symptoms; however, perceived defusing needs and use are not always balanced. Our aim was to explore Finnish paramedics’ professional quality of life, using the Professional Quality of Life Scale, with associations to EMS assignment experiences as well as formal and informal defusing need and use over a 12-month period. Methods: A quantitative study of 257 Finnish paramedics using a cross-sectional design. Study outcomes were secondary traumatic stress (STS), compassion satisfaction (CS), and burnout (BO) scores using the modified 9-item Short Professional Quality of Life scale (ProQOL). Likert-type scales were used to collect participants’ recollections of assignment experiences and defusing from a 12-month period. Associations were explored using Spearman’s correlation coefficients. Results: Short ProQOL score medians were STS 4.00 (IQR 3), BO 6.00 (IQR 3) and CS 13.00 (IQR 3). STS and BO correlated to experiences of social emergencies and traumatic events while BO correlated to experiences of threat situations ( r = 0.206, p = .001). Paramedics perceived a need for defusing in general associated with STS ( r = 0.178, p < .001) and participated in informal defusing. Participation in defusing of any form did not associate with ProQOL scores. Conclusions: Finnish paramedics’ more frequent experiences of social emergencies, traumatic events, and paramedic-directed threat situations were associated with higher levels of STS and BO. STS was also associated with paramedics’ increased need for defusing and use of informal peer defusing, although neither STS, BO or CS scores associated to any defusing form. Managing paramedics STS and BO, while fostering CS, could therefore be a future research focus.
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Accumulations of stress factors correlate with increased risk for paramedics' burnout and fatigue and with changing profession.
“Accumulations of such aforementioned stress factors have shown correlations with an increased risk for paramedics’ burnout and fatigue and even the changing profession [5, 27, 29, 30]”
From Paramedics’ perceptions of job demands and resources in Finnish emergency medical services: a qualitative study (2022) · cites this paper as [27]
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- Authors
- Ericsson, C. R., Nordquist, H., Lindström, V., & Rudman, A.
- Affiliations
- University of Helsinki (FI)
- South Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (FI)
- Karolinska Institutet (SE)
- Dalarna University (SE)
- Corresponding author
- Ericsson, Christoffer R.
- Venue
- BMC Public Health
- Published
- 2021-10-05
- Volume
- 21
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 1789-1789
- ISSN
- 1471-2458 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC8490964
- OpenAlex
- W3203537579
- Cited by
- 23
- References
- 42
- Citations by year
- 2026: 6 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 1 · 2022: 1
- FWCI
- 5.35
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- BMC Public Health (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Dalarna University College Electronic Archive (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Työväentutkimus Vuosikirja (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › Occupational Therapy › Occupational Health and Burnout
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Social Psychology › Stress and Burnout Research
- Health Sciences › Health Professions › General Health Professions › Healthcare professionals’ stress and burnout
- Keywords
- paramedics, professional quality of life, secondary traumatic stress, burnout, compassion satisfaction, defusing, peer support, emergency medical services, traumatic events, social emergency
- MeSH terms
- Allied Health Personnel, Burnout, Professional, Cross-Sectional Studies, Empathy, Finland, Humans, Job Satisfaction, Quality of Life, Surveys and Questionnaires
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