Paramedical students’ perceptions of research: a survey

Abstract

Background

There is a general perception that research is underdeveloped in rehabilitation professions. However, a PubMed search found that the growth in publications in the rehabilitation field was twice that of the general medical field. Despite this growth, another study focusing on Europe found that the proportion of articles reporting on clinical research in the rehabilitation field remained low (less than 40% of articles). This could be due to lack of teaching about research in rehabilitation schools or the late introduction of such courses.

Aims

Describe the students’ perceptions of research: their desire to conduct research, the usefulness of research and research competence.

Methods

Questionnaire survey targeting all French paramedical students (speech therapy, occupational therapy, psychomotricity, audiometry, physiotherapy, orthoptics) in their final year of study in 2018-2019.

Results

Overall, 791 students completed the full survey representing a response rate of 36.3% of the students contacted. Only 34.3% of rehabilitation students were willing to conduct research despite finding it useful (98.6%). The main barrier was the preference for their core operational work (cited 444 times, representing 17.6% of citations). There was a significant relation between perceived competence and the attractiveness of research: 84% of the students not interested in research felt they were not competent to conduct research but this figure dropped to 57.6% amongst the students interested in research (OR 4.0; 95% CI 2.9-5.6). Using a multivariate analysis, we confirmed that the main incentive was feeling competent, as well as past contact with research and supervisors who promoted research work.

Conclusion

Students have little contact with research during their internships, low perceived competence and, consequently, little desire to conduct research.

Keywords:

• Paramedicals
• research
• survey
• students

Data availability statement

The individual participant survey data will not be shared.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Xavier Perrot, director of the ISTR (institut des sciences et techniques de la réadaptation) for his support. We thank Maxime Bonjour and Clemence Lavier, residents, who contributed to the protocol design. We thank Marc Berard, Data Protection Officer, for his help with General Data Protection Regulation. We also thank Alice Mathieux, who made the phone calls to the contacted schools. Finally, we would like to thank Florence Bouriot for providing articles. Lastly, we thank Kim Barrett for English proofreading.

Transparency

Declaration of funding

This project was funded by the French paramedical funding scheme “PHRIP” from Ministère de la Santé. The funding source was not involved in the study conception or interpretation.

Declaration of financial/other relationships

The authors and peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Author contributions

ED: conceived study, analyzed data, drafted manuscript; BT: conceived study, managed questionnaires; BD: conceived study, managed questionnaires; NG: participated in study and questionnaire conception; AW: conceived study, conceived questionnaire, contributed to manuscript.

The lead author (the manuscript’s guarantor) affirms that the manuscript is an honest, accurate, and transparent account of the study being reported; that no important aspects of the study have been omitted; and that any discrepancies from the study as planned (and, if relevant, registered) have been explained.

Ethical approval and regulatory requirements

The study complies with European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Since no health data was collected, ethics committee authorization was not required. Information on the study was explained on the first page of the survey, answering the questionnaire was considered as consent.