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Orsi, A., Watson, A., Wijegoonewardene, N., Botan, V. 
ORCID: 0000-0003-1583-3913, Lloyd, D., Dunbar, N., Asghar, Z. and Siriwardena, A.N.,
2022.
Perceptions and experiences of medical student first responders: a mixed methods study.
BMC Medical Education, 22: 721.
ISSN 1472-6920
Abstract
Context: Medical Student First Responders (MSFRs) are volunteers who respond to emergency calls, managing patients before ambulance staff attend. The MSFR role provides opportunities to manage acutely unwell patients in the prehospital environment, not usually offered as part of formal undergraduate medical education. There are few previous studies describing activities or experiences of MSFRs or exploring the potential educational benefits. We aimed to investigate the activity of MSFRs and explore their experiences, particularly from an educational perspective.
Methods: We used a mixed methods design, combining quantitative analysis of ambulance dispatch data with qualitative semi-structured interviews of MSFRs. Dispatch data were from South Central and East Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trusts from 1st January to 31st December 2019. Using propensity score matching, we compared incidents attended by MSFRs with those attended by other Community First Responders (CFRs) and ambulance staff. We interviewed MSFRs from five English (UK) medical schools in those regions about their experiences and perceptions and undertook thematic analysis supported by NVivo 12.
Results: We included 1,939 patients (median age 58.0 years, 51% female) attended by MSFRs. Incidents attended were more urgent category calls (category 1 n = 299, 14.9% and category 2 n = 1,504, 77.6%), most commonly for chest pain (n = 275, 14.2%) and shortness of breath (n = 273, 14.1%). MSFRs were less likely to attend patients of white ethnicity compared to CFRs and ambulance staff, and more likely to attend incidents in areas of higher socioeconomic deprivation (IMD – index of multiple deprivation) (p < 0.05). Interviewees (n = 16) consistently described positive experiences which improved their clinical and communication skills.
Conclusion: MSFRs’ attendance at serious medical emergencies provide a range of reported educational experiences and benefits. Further studies are needed to explore whether MSFR work confers demonstrable improvements in educational or clinical performance.
| Item Type: | Journal article | ||||||
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| Description: | Correction published: 29 November 2022. ORSI, A., WATSON, A., WIJEGOONEWARDENE, N., BOTAN, V., LLOYD, D., DUNBAR, N., ASGHAR, Z. and SIRIWARDENA, A.N., 2022. Correction: Perceptions and experiences of medical student first responders: a mixed methods study. BMC Medical Education, 22: 819. ISSN 1472-6920. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12909-022-03884-9 | ||||||
| Publication Title: | BMC Medical Education | ||||||
| Creators: | Orsi, A., Watson, A., Wijegoonewardene, N., Botan, V., Lloyd, D., Dunbar, N., Asghar, Z. and Siriwardena, A.N. | ||||||
| Publisher: | Springer | ||||||
| Date: | 2022 | ||||||
| Volume: | 22 | ||||||
| ISSN: | 1472-6920 | ||||||
| Identifiers: |
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| Rights: | This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. | ||||||
| Divisions: | Schools > School of Social Sciences | ||||||
| Record created by: | Jonathan Gallacher | ||||||
| Date Added: | 27 Jun 2023 09:25 | ||||||
| Last Modified: | 27 Jun 2023 09:56 | ||||||
| URI: | https://irep.ntu.ac.uk/id/eprint/49285 |
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