The physical preparation of paramedicine students for the paramedic role: A scoping review
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The paramedic role is physically demanding, yet limited attention has been given to how paramedicine students are physically prepared for practice within tertiary education programmes. The extent to which physical fitness standards and training are embedded in curricula, professional registration requirements or pre-employment testing remains unclear. This review explored how paramedicine students are physically prepared within tertiary education and whether student fitness levels meet the demands of the paramedic role in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the United Kingdom (UK), Ireland and Canada. A scoping review was conducted and reported following guidelines from the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR). Electronic databases (Medline, CINAHL, Scopus, ERIC, Emcare and Informit) and grey literature sources (university handbooks, policy documents and online domains) were searched, with searches completed in June 2025. Curriculum documentation from 51 universities, two organisation or college documents and nine relevant studies were analysed. Four universities (one in Australia and three in South Africa) in the six countries (Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada and South Africa) included in the review clearly embedded physical fitness training in their curricula. Most Australian institutions addressed fitness only as a requirement of work-integrated learning (WIL), typically mandated by placement providers. Internationally, South African programmes integrated sequenced physical preparation within curricula, while UK and Irish programmes applied entry screening prior to enrolment with manual handling training integrated within curricula. One study found that student fitness levels were comparable to the general population, but there is inconsistent data whether they meet all of the essential job demands of the paramedic role. There is limited and inconsistent integration of physical fitness information and preparation in paramedicine education. Embedding structured physical readiness frameworks into curricula may improve student support and preparedness for WIL. Future research should investigate validated physical fitness standards and strategies to ensure student readiness for the physical demands of the paramedic role.
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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 | 0.010 | 0.050 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.009 | 0.010 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
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".