Nurses' perceptions of the emergency medical technician's role and the paramedic's role

The purpose of this study was to determine If nurses perceive differences between the emergency medical technician role and the paramedic role. Emergency medical services have become an important link in the health care system. An accurate understanding by nurses of the different roles of EMS providers can help foster their integration into the health care system. Role theory provided the theoretical framework for the study. Subjects were nurses. RNs and LPNs, employed at a 150-bed general hospital in an urban city in the southeastern United States of America. The participants were licensed staff nurses working on speciality units and general medical-surgical units. A convenience sample of 57 subjects was recruited for voluntary participation in the study during monthly unit staff meetings. Data collection was conducted over a one month period and involved questionnaire completion. Instruments included a role perception questionnaire and a demographic survey. Both instruments were developed by the researcher. A descriptive analysis of the data was done utilizing measures of central tendency and frequency distributions. Correlational analyses, t tests, and a paired t test were used to answer the research questions and subsidiary questions. A probability of p = .05 was selected as the criterion of statistical significance. The study revealed that nurses do perceive the differences between the EMT role and the paramedic role. However, their perception of the role of the paramedic was significantly more accurate than their perception of the role of the EMT. There was no relationship between years of experience and their perception of the two roles. There was no significant difference between the responses of RNs and LPNs or between nurses working on specialty units and nurses working on general medical-surgical units regarding perception of the two roles. Implications for nursing practice and for future research were offered.