Professionalism among paramedic students: achieving the measure or missing the mark?

Figures & data

Table 1 Professional characteristics over 100 years

Flexner*^Citation10	Bixler and Bixler^Citation15	Greenwood*^Citation5	Cruess and Cruess^Citation12	Swick^Citation13	Steinert et al^Citation14
Altruism	Altruism	Authority	Altruism	Accountability	Altruism
Educationally communicable technique	Autonomy	Code of ethics	Authority	Advance field	Autonomy
Intellectual operations	Increasing body of knowledge	Sanction of the community	Autonomous	Altruism	Commitment
Practical applications of knowledge	Positioned in higher education	Self-organization	Code of ethics	Autonomous	Competence
Science and learning	Practical applications of knowledge	Systematic theory	Discrete body of knowledge	Code of ethics	Integrity and honesty
Self-organization	Well-defined knowledge	–	Formalized association	Commitment to excellence	Morality and ethics
–	–	–	Lawful	Patient oriented	Responsibility to society
–	–	–	Organized and independent	Regards humanistic values	Responsibility to the profession
–	–	–	Self-regulating (academic)	Self-reflection	Self-regulation
–	–	–	Serve community	Serve community	Teamwork

Note:

* Generic occupational trait.

Figure 1 Search results and study selection.

Table 2 Overview of included articles

Year	Author	Location	Study type	Cohort size	Main findings
2004	James and Lindstrom^Citation42	US	Prospective	1510	The variance in results suggests further refinement with the scale
2004	Brown et al^Citation43	US	Retrospective	222	The scale was “good” and paramedics were the most critical of their peers
2011	Burford et al^Citation60	UK	Focus group	–	This was a work group of thought leaders to develop a conscientiousness and professionalism scale
2013	Burford et al^Citation61	UK	Cross-sectional	323	Data collection and validation of an 11-factor 68-item scale
2014	Burford et al^Citation44	UK	Focus group	112	Examine the definition of professionalism across three health care occupations

Table S1 A keyword search

Concept 1	Concept 2	Concept 3
“Emergency medical services”	“Cronbach’s alpha”.tw	“Affective domain”.tw
“Emergency medical technician”	“Factor analysis”	“Professional role”.tw
“Emergency medical technician$”	“Factor analysis”.tw	“Soft skills”.tw
“Paramedic student”.tw	“Internal consistency”.tw	^*Professionalism/ed, st (Education, standards)
Ambulance	“Reproducibility adj1 results”	Profession^*
EMS	Dimensional.tw	Professionalism
EMT	educat^* measurement	Professionalism.tw
Paramedic	educat^* standards
Paramedic$.tw	educat^* tool^*
Paramedicine.tw	measure^* tool^*
	Measurement
	Model.tw
	Questionnaire.tw
	Reliability.tw
	Statistical
	Survey
	Survey.tw
	Validity.tw

Abbreviations: EMS, Emergency Medical Services; EMT, Emergency Medical Technician; tw, text word; $.tw, wild card text word.

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