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It takes a unique individual to simultaneously care for a patient while educating and evaluating a student
In 1977 I graduated from a hospital-based paramedic program that didn't have a structured ambulance internship in the plan of study.
Since it was the only program around, I was happy to just have the opportunity to go to paramedic school. Furthermore, the paramedic profession was in its infancy, so ambulance services only had first-generation paramedics to assist with the learning and orientation process. For all intents and purposes, these first-generation paramedics utilized camaraderie to help each other learn the "street medic" way of doing business.
I have fond memories of those early days, but my street orientation to the paramedic profession was nothing more than on-the-job training. Today, paramedic students transition from classroom to street via a rigid process known as the field internship, which documents competencies, outcomes, etc. However, does our profession mirror other healthcare professions such as nursing and medicine when it comes to clinical internships? Or, do we still rely on an on-the-job training mentality without looking at today's research of clinical internship?
In 2011 I conducted in-depth, faceto-face, audiotaped and transcribed interviews with paramedic preceptors to gain a better understanding of ambulance preceptorship, and to assist with revising the paramedic preceptor program at Montana State University Billings.1 What seemed obvious during the interviews was that it takes a unique individual to simultaneously care for a patient while educating and evaluating a student. Overall, this article will discuss the similarities these preceptors utilized to teach, mentor and evaluate students during the field internship.
What Is Preceptorship?
Field internship, or ambulance preceptorship, should not be confused with ambulance orientation, since ambulance orientation teaches a new hire how the EMS organization handles business-policies/procedures-on a daily basis. Nor should it be confused with the credentialing process that medical directors utilize to validate clinical competencies of paramedics by the use of their clinical coordinator and field-training officers. However, preceptorship is a widely used teaching method by a number of healthcare professions that utilizes preceptors as the gatekeepers for their profession.2 3 In other words, if a student wants to graduate and sit for their licensing examination, they musí first successfully pass through a preceptorship before permission...