Introduction Psychology is a crucial component of paramedicine, influencing both the effectiveness of patient care and the well-being of paramedics. As first responders, paramedics frequently encounter high-stress situations and traumatic events that affect both the patient and the worker. Integrating psychology into paramedicine not only enhances the ability for paramedics to manage their own stress and maintain mental fitness, but also improves their capacity to provide compassionate, patient-centred care. This essay explores four types of psychology relevant to paramedicine, including health stress and coping, fitness to practice, health literacy, and neuropsychology. The integration of these psychological principles is essential in ensuring …show more content…
It entails maintaining the mental, emotional, and physical well-being required to carry out their responsibilities with efficiency. Physical health ensures the paramedics can handle the job's demands, like lifting patients, responding quickly to emergencies, and working long shifts. Mental health ensures that they have the ability to make wise choices, manage stress, and communicate with patients, coworkers, and other healthcare professionals in an efficient manner. Finally, emotional health allows paramedics to be able to handle the pressures and emotional toll of the job, which often involves dealing with traumatic events and providing support to patients in distress. In order to give patients the best care possible, paramedics must be in good physical and mental health. This is known as maintaining fitness. The Paramedicine Board of Australia (2021) states that the key elements of fitness to practice must include competence, professionalism, including a sense of responsibility and accountability, self-awareness and professional values, sound mental health and the capacity to maintain health and well-being for …show more content…
Comprehending the fundamentals of neuropsychology enables paramedics to evaluate and treat patients suffering from neurological disorders such as seizures, strokes, and traumatic brain injuries. It can also help paramedics recognise patients suffering from diseases such as dementia and how they can deal with those patients. This can be a difficult process since many of these kinds of patients also have problems with memory, verbal communication, perception, abstract thinking, and judgement. Ruff (2009) furthermore expresses the challenges paramedics can face assessing patients with neurocognitive disorders, stating that the many neurological injuries can be difficult to identify by first
Throughout the fire service, firefighters encounter a high level of different stresses that can cause post dramatic stress disorder. A plethora amount of people have not thought about how not only the military personnel, however a wide range of emergency calls or other factors come into play that results in fire personnel acquiring this disorder. This disorder has an enormous problem that will affect the management in the fire department.
I intend to explore the effects of a parietal brain injury from the perspective of a neuropsychologist; ranging from types of tests that are employed when trying to determine the extent of the damage, to gaining an understanding of how this damage will affect the rest of the brain and/or the body. I will also explore the effects of a brain injury from the perspective of the family members, and their experiences with the changes that occur during the rehabilitation process. According to The Neuropsychology Center, “neuropsychological assessment is a systematic clinical diagnostic procedure used to determine the extent of any possible behavioral deficits following diagnosed or suspected brain injury”(www.neuropsych.com). As mentioned previously, a brain injury can be the result of many types of injuries or disorders, thus a broad range of assessment procedures have been developed to encompass these possibilities.
Williams, B, Jennings, P, Fiedler, C & Ghirardello, A 2013, ‘Next generation paramedics, agents of change, or time for curricula renewal?’, Advances in Medical Education & Practice, vol.4, pp. 225, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.2147/AMEP.S53085
Traumatic brain injuries (TBI) account to a third (30.5%) of all injury-related deaths in the U.S. with an estimated 1.7 million individuals sustaining TBI each year (Center for Disease Control and Prevention, 2010). Classifications of brain injury (e.g., mild, moderate and severe) is mostly done using the Glasgow coma scale (GCS) which has gained broad acceptance for the assessment of the severity of brain damage (Bauer & Fritz, 2004). Recent studies suggest that almost all patients with moderate or severe TBI have a period of recovery during which they are responsive but confused. This state is commonly referred to as the post-traumatic amnesia. Post-traumatic amnesia (PTA) is defined as “a failure of continuous memory” (Artiola et al., 1980; p.377). PTA is often cited as the best method for codifying the degree, level of recovery and outcome after a closed head injury (e.g., Artieola et al., 1980; Tate, Pfaff, & Jurjevic, 2000). PTA duration is a better indicator of outcome than early injury scales such as the GCS score (Richardson et al., 2009).This analysis will examine the limitations of the general PTA assessment scale, and investigate the benefits and limitations of both retrospective and prospective methods used to measure the duration of PTA.
Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy, previously referred to as dementia pugilistica, can be understood as a tauopathic, neurodegenerative and neuropsychiatric disease. While there is no neurobiological or neuropathological explanation as to why CTE occurs, the majority of researchers believe the disease is strongly related to previous head injuries. An individual suffering from CTE will most likely experience changes in their mood, behavior and cognition. Because this is a relatively new area of research, there are still a vast amount of unknowns pertaining to the disease’s symptoms, pathology, and natural course.
According to Kashyap, et al., (2014), resilience is a positive personal attribute buffers the impact of stress and helps maintain health. Research has identified personal characteristics of individuals that possess the capacity for resilience. During the hiring process, selecting candidates that possess the identified personal characteristics would increase the likelihood of successful acclamation to the ER environment. Resiliency characteristics include: creative thinking/or problem solving, decisive action, tenacity, interpersonal connectedness, honesty, self-control, and optimism (Tubbert, 2016). Resilience is the positive capacity of people to cope with stress (Kashyap et al., 2014). Resilient individuals have the ability to successfully cope during times of chronic stress (Kashyap, et al., 2014). Nursing in the ER is stressful, therefore teaching nurses how to manage the stress needs to be a priority for nursing administrations. The most important defense against stress is resilience (Kashyap, et al., 2014). Eliminating occupational stress from ER nursing is impossible, but resilience training can improve how nurses deal with the unavoidable stress. Resilience is an interaction between individual resources and current situational events (Goodman et al., 2017). Maintaining resilience requires diligence and continuous evaluation of the need for support. Resilience is not constant across time and context, rather it is dynamic in nature (Goodman et al., 2017). Resilience training will assist ER nurses in overcoming
the psychological health of police, fire, and ambulance officers.” International Journal of Stress Management, Vol. 11, pp. 227-44.
A Paramedic (EMT-P) works directly with the public providing personal assistance, medical attention, and emotional support. They respond to medical emergencies providing on-scene treatment, crisis intervention, life-saving stabilization, and transport of ill or injured patients to a treatment center.
Cognitive psychologists investigate processes using case studies of brain-damaged patients, these are then analysed to build models that represent normal cognitive processes. This essay will examine the contribution case studies have made to the development of cognitive neuropsychology as a discipline in its own right and draw attention to issues surrounding the use of brain damaged patients to infer cognitive functions and processes. At the same time, it will evaluate the contribution that case studies have made to our understanding of cognitive processes.
My paper is based on an article from the text’s web site (chapter 9) entitled “Lack of sleep ages body’s systems.” The basic claim of the article is that sleep deprivation has various harmful effects on the body. The reported effects include decreased ability to metabolize glucose (similar to what occurs in diabetes) and increased levels of cortisol (a stress hormone involved in memory and regulation of blood sugar levels). The article also briefly alludes (in the quote at the bottom of page 1) to unspecified changes in brain and immune functioning with sleep deprivation.
Neuropsychology is a branch of general psychology that is concerned with how the brain and the rest of the nervous system influence cognition and behavior. Professionals in this branch make it a goal to understand of how the brain influences cognitive functions and behavior. In fact, modern neuropsychology has roots that began in the 19th century. During this time, some of the first neuropsychologists studied animals and humans with brain and nervous system injuries. The significance of neuropsychology is subject to urgent brain trauma, which could cause complete loss of functionality of the body. The study of neuropsychology helps doctors understand how brain malfunctions occur.
Psychology is the investigation of the mind and how it processes and directs our thoughts, actions and conceptions. However, in 1879 Wilhelm Wundt opened the first psychology laboratory at the University of Leipzig in Germany. Nevertheless, the origins of psychology go all the way back thousands of years starting with the early Greeks. This foundation is closely connected to biology and philosophy; and especially the subfields of physiology which is the study of the roles of living things and epistemology, which is the study of comprehension and how we understand what we have learned. The connection to physiology and epistemology is often viewed as psychology, which is the hybrid offspring of those two fields of investigation.
...R. (2006). Paramedics’ clinical judgement and mental health assessments in emergency contexts: Research, practice, and tools of the trade. Australasian Journal of Paramedicine, 4(2). Received from http://ro.ecu.edu.au/
While going through training, I began to realize this is a career that is can be emotionally overwhelming. You must be able to cope with mental stress, and stay prepared at all times. Just the fact that you don’t know what you are going to encounter throughout one day can be stressful. Knowing this you must learn how to deal with your emotions, whether it’s through group therapy or just relaxing after work. People are going to depend on you when they’re in a dangerous situation and you must be strong and help them when they are in need. To help others you must also be physically and menta...
I never noticed how much psychology could be incorporated into everyday life. But really, any decision or action you take is related to it. I have personally been extremely interested in social psychology: why people do things because of social norms, what people do in order to look socially acceptable, etc. Others topics I also find interesting are sensation and perception; how past experiences can influence how you perceive the things around you, states of consciousness; how things that have happened in your day can be transferred into a mash of events in your dreams, motivation and emotion; what makes a person do something or what makes a person start or stop procrastination, and lastly: personality; what characteristics and traits stand out the most in a person, what makes a person who they are.