Do Paramedic Students Possess Situational Awareness?

Background: For paramedic students to be situationally aware, they must identify a situation, interpret the situation, and then be able to predict how that information will affect future events. No empirical research has been completed that identifies whether paramedic students possess situational awareness.

Objective: To identify if paramedic students possess situational awareness.

Method: Students wore a point-of-view camera during a simulated prehospital emergency call. Descriptive statistics and thematic analyses of interviews were utilized to interpret the data derived from 12 paramedic students in the simulated prehospital environment. Statistics were derived from debriefing interviews, surveys, as well as the point-of-view cameras. The situational awareness global assessment technique (SAGAT) was used during all debriefings to help determine if students were situationally aware. 

Conclusions: The data show paramedics students do not possess full situational awareness. While the students may have been successful in these simulations with other assessment tools, they failed to recognize too many pertinent events, and of the events they did recognize, they struggled to properly interpret what those events meant or how they may affect future events. Students were not performing thorough enough assessments, which might have led to the failure to be situationally aware. Further research is needed to determine improved best practices in paramedic situational awareness education.