When efforts are made to ensure that there are a sufficient number of qualified trainees for a profession and that qualified professionals remain in the field, the attractiveness of the profession plays a decisive role. In view of the demographic development in the Federal Republic of Germany and current trends in the German educational system, an investigation into the attractiveness of the job profile of paramedic and corresponding strategies to increase this attractiveness would appear to be very important in order to avoid facing a drastic shortage of personnel in the emergency services, as happened with nursing staff in the field of hospital care. Using three target-group related questionnaires, a written survey of potential trainees, trainees for the job of paramedic and of professional paramedics was carried out for the present empirical investigation and comprehensive data on the attractiveness of paramedic as a profession was obtained. According to the 303 potential trainees asked, the job profile is attractive for this group mainly due to the meaningfulness, the variety and the independence of the job and the possibility of helping other people. The potentially unattractive features for this target group appear to be the low salaries, the overly long working hours, the fact that the hours are not very suited for family life, the high physical and psychological stress, the lack of professional prospects and the cost of the training. The largest potential for improving the attractiveness of the professional profile of paramedic in the case of the potential trainees would be to increase and optimise information on the profession, as this target group is obviously ill-informed or wrongly informed about the job. It is therefore recommended that measures are taken to increase information, e.g. by means of specific job advertising. The 837 trainees were mainly pleased with the training. Over 80 % of those asked would, for example, have chosen the same course of training again. At the same time further changes and improvements in the training situation were able to be realised. The 1,525 professionals asked were pleased with their job in the emergency services, i.e. there was a high level of attractiveness regarding the job profile in this target group as well. Although some problem areas were apparent, the overall attractiveness of the job was not questioned. Although the job profile for paramedic is on the whole obviously attractive for professionals, the problems of working in the emergency services and of the job profile cannot be denied. The following are probably of central importance: an improvement of the training and further training chances, the creation of adequate professional promotion opportunities, the reduction of the physical and psychological work loads and the improvement of the public's estimation of the emergency service profession. The questionnaires used can be consulted at BAST. (Author/publisher)
Abstract