Understanding the Occupational Factors that Influence Paramedic Health and Wellbeing

Abstract

Introduction: Health and wellbeing is essential to perform professionally and personally. The demanding workload and high-pressure nature of the paramedic profession, undoubtably has an influence on the paramedic’s health and wellbeing however the individual variance and factors associated is poorly understood. The objective of this review is to identify what is known about the occupational factors that influence paramedic health and wellbeing to make recommendations in improving working conditions and thus health and wellbeing of the workforce.
 Methods: The JBI approach was used to perform a scoping review to assess the availability of literature dating from January 2003 to January 2023. Keywords including paramedic*, first responder*, influence* OR perception*, health, wellbeing were input into the OVID, PsycINFO and PubMed databases. Titles and abstracts were reviewed by two authors and inclusion and exclusion criteria applied. The remaining articles were then reviewed in full text by two authors and conflicts managed by the primary author.
 Results: The search of the electronic databases identified 314 articles. Of these, 33 informed the results of the review. The search highlighted the paramedics poor reportable levels of health compared to other occupations. An analysis identified themes emerging from the literature including: (1)shift work; (2) mental health issues; (3) exposure to critical incidents; and (4) the influence of the profession on physical activity and ailment.
 Conclusion: A paramedics occupation has a significant influence on the individual’s health and is associated with an increased incidence of reportable illness and injury. The review concluded that there is insufficient data to identify the paramedics personal perception of the influences on their health and wellbeing. Thus, there is a lack of understanding of why the paramedic has poor reportable levels of health in their own words, which would be invaluable to the formation of preventative and supportive approaches to this workforce.