Potential for Paramedic roles in Irish General Practice: A qualitative study of stakeholder’s perspectives
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background : Irish health policy emphasises the role of Primary Care and General Practice however, there is a growing shortage of General Practitioners (GPs) in Ireland. Paramedics have traditionally focused on emergency care in the community. More recently Paramedics have taken on roles in General Practice in international jurisdictions, but not yet in Ireland. This study aimed to explore key stakeholder perceptions of ‘the potential for Paramedic roles in Irish General Practice’. Methods : We conducted an exploratory, qualitative stakeholder consultation study incorporating in-depth semi structured telephone interviews followed by thematic analysis. Interviews were conducted with a total of eighteen participants that included six senior Paramedics (Advanced Paramedics), seven General Practitioners (GPs), three Practice Nurses and two Practice Managers. Results : Participants in this study expressed polarised views on the potential for Paramedic roles in Irish General Practice. Paramedics were enthusiastic, highlighting opportunity for professional development and favourable working conditions. GP’s, Practice Nurses and Managers were more circumspect and had concerns that Paramedic scope and skillset was not currently aligned to General Practice care. GP’s, Practice Nurses and Managers emphasised a greater role for expanded General Practice Nursing. There were varied perceptions on what the potential role of a Paramedic in General Practice might entail, but consensus that Government support would be required to facilitate any potential developments. Conclusions : The findings of this research can inform future development of novel roles in Irish General Practice and suggests that there is appetite from within the Paramedic profession to pursue such roles. A pilot demonstration project, grounded in an action research framework could address data gaps and potential concerns. Any future developments should occur in tandem with and with due consideration for the expansion of General Practice Nursing in Ireland.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.023 | 0.021 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.009 | 0.009 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.007 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.005 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".