Christoffer Ericsson

Paramedic

Finland

Doctorate Title: Exploring the Dynamics of Psychological Resilience in Nordic Paramedic Professionals.

Doctorate Description: The research project strives to enhance an understanding of the dynamics of psychological resilience in Nordic (Finnish, Swedish and Norwegian) paramedics.

Psychological resilience has been found to be a protective adaptive ability to manage negative stressors. There are associations between resilience, compassion fatigue and burnout. There is also a need to understand the impacts of psychological safety on resilience. Investigations of the dynamics of psychological resilience in paramedics, including exploring burnout and compassion fatigue and attempts to identify developmental factors of positive coping in early stages of a paramedic career, are less covered. Research focus has been on post-traumatic stress disorder and burnout resulting from exposures to acute traumatic events with less focus on social distress. A gap in knowledge is evident from Nordic paramedic cohorts, where job competencies match, inter-professional collaboration has a long history while professional profiles could also partly explain complexities of paramedics’ mental wellbeing.

Considering the changing professional role and increasing interest of university-level education, increasing patient groups with social needs and high prevalance of traumatic and threatful situations that paramedics encounter, paramedics’ psychological load and resilience is relevant and front-line research. The project will examine association between organizational psychological safety and psychosocial safety climate and burnout in paramedic students’ transition into the professional role.

This research project will attempt to answer research questions relating to:

- Paramedics' on-call experiences and job characteristics' association to Nordic paramedic practitioners’ psychological resilience?

- Associations between organizational psychological safety and psychosocial safety on burnout levels and coping strategies among paramedics?

- The association between undergraduate Nordic paramedic degrees and practitioners’ psychological resilience during transition from students to professionals.