Human factors in student paramedic practice

Human factors are any combination of personal, psychological and environmental issues that affect an individual and their routine practice (Summers and Willis, 2010). Human factors have been discussed within the medical profession and are considered part of the World Health Organization's patient safety curriculum guide for medical schools (WHO, 2011). However, studies on human factors within paramedic practice, let alone student paramedic practice, are much sparser.

In the scenario that follows, several human factors, such as fatigue, poor communication, personality type and a lack of mutual understanding that affect the student's practice can be identified. Where a mentor is referred to in this discussion, this includes any paramedic who is capable of supervising students, whether they have an official mentorship role or not.

An experienced band 6 paramedic and a final year student paramedic were called to a 64–year-old man with chest pain. On arrival, the patient said he had been trying to contact his doctor's surgery to obtain a repeat prescription and to discuss his mental health issues as a result of a recent bereavement but had been transferred to the out-of-hours service. He said he had experienced central chest pain approximately 20 minutes before the crew arrived. A 12–lead electrocardiogram (ECG) was conducted alongside some observations (Table 1). The ECG showed a normal sinus rhythm with no signs indicating arrhythmia, ischaemia, infarction or pulmonary embolism.