Paramedic Experiences and Perceptions of Training for Participation in Research: the PREPARE Study

The investigators are currently conducting a research study, called PRESTO, in the pre-hospital environment where the investigators are asking paramedics to talk to patients about participating in the research study, interpret a heart tracing (or ECG), take a blood sample and record some study specific information. Apart from ECG interpretation, these are activities that the paramedics would not normally do and so the investigators had to provide training in order to ensure that these activities were carried out to the same standard across the four ambulance services that were involved, all of who have different working practices.

In order to do this, the investigators provided a training package based around four subject areas - blood sample collection, heart tracing interpretation, background to the study and the importance of conducting the study activities to a high standard (called Research Fundamentals). These were presented to the paramedics either as online training or in a face-to-face session. There has been a mixed response to both the uptake in training across the four ambulance services and the engagement from paramedics in following PRESTO with a potential participant.

As more research is being done in the pre-hospital environment the investigators feel that it would be beneficial to try to find out why paramedics may or may not have taken part in the PRESTO training. To do this the investigators will be sending out a survey to each of the four ambulance services which will contain questions around whether the paramedics thought the training package for PRESTO was suitable, whether the paramedics felt confident following PRESTO with a potential participant after the training and what the paramedics think the main barriers are to participating in research. Up to 30 paramedics will also be approached to participate in an interview, which will explore these ideas further.

This should allow the investigators to identify potential barriers that prevent paramedics from taking part in training for research studies. It should also allow the investigators to offer insight to future researchers about the type of training that should be provided for paramedics for a research study and how it should be delivered.