Teaching Students to think like a Paramedic: Improving Professional Judgement through Assessment Conversations

James Thompson, Kathryn Dansie, Donald Houston

Research output: Contribution to journalMeeting Abstractpeer-review

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Abstract

The ability to self-assess is essential to the practitioner who often works independently, and reflective practice is entrenched within the paramedic process of care. In order to develop these practices a paramedic student must be able to self-identify mistakes and learn from their errors. However, student assessment has traditionally focused heavily upon outcomes, with errors being penalised. Justification for these customary approaches towards the assessment of paramedic students acknowledges the potentially catastrophic consequences associated with mistakes being repeated in the real pre-hospital setting. Responding to the challenge of balancing the reflective practice skills set with ‘real world’ implications of case outcomes, an assessment process was re-designed. The “Student-Tutor Consensus Assessment” (STCA) was created to rebalance assessment weighting from being exclusively outcomes-focussed, and encourage students to apply a similar critical lens to events as the paramedics assessing them. Parallel tutor and student self-assessments are applied to simulated scenarios, with scores only awarded to criteria where consensus has been reached.
Original languageEnglish
JournalAustralasian Journal of Paramedicine
Volume14
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 5 Feb 2017
EventParamedics Australasia International Conference 2016 - Auckland, New Zealand
Duration: 18 Nov 201619 Nov 2016

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