How senior rural EMS officials develop their leadership competencies

Abstract

This qualitative narrative analysis used interviews with rural senior emergency medical services (EMS) leaders in the Midwest to investigate how they developed their leadership skillset in the absence of formal development. The study culled the experiences of the EMS leaders from the beginning of their career to the present day because research shows that leadership is a lifelong endeavor (Liu et al., 2021). The experiential learning theory advanced by David Kolb (2015) was the theoretical framework used to guide this research. The main research questions that guided this study are: What are the experiences of senior rural EMS leaders that formed their current leadership abilities? and Based on their developmental experiences, what competencies do senior rural EMS leaders say that future EMS leaders need to learn? The findings indicate that experience-driven leadership was the primary means of development for these rural EMS chiefs. Additionally, the chiefs suggested that having strong clinical leadership, communication, and networking skills are competencies that the next generation of leaders should develop before taking on an organizational leadership position. The main implication of this study is that experiences are a more significant driving force in the development of leadership skills than leader development programs. This indicates that models like Kolb's experiential learning theory are important for guiding the development experiences of the leader-learner.--Author's abstract