Fear, performance and power: a study of simulation learning in paramedic education.

Simulation or scenario learning is an integral part of student paramedic development and, despite the increasing amount of paramedic research, very little is known about how students and tutors experience it. Current literature regards simulation as invaluable without exploring why this may be the case and this study aims to address this. This is a compressed time mode ethnographic approach study that incorporates data from student paramedics during and immediately after simulation learning events and tutor views of facilitating the simulation experience. This, along with a comprehensive literature review, provides an overview of simulation in the student paramedic development pathway. This thesis exposes how student paramedics find the simulation process anxiety provoking and explores the many reasons for this. The performance aspect of scenarios is echoed in the dramaturgical language used when talking about simulation learning events and the similarities between simulation learning events and simulation assessment events merely adds to this stress. Using the lens of critical pedagogy, issues of power (control and hierarchy) within the educational and organisational structures are examined and offered as another possible explanation for the high levels of anxiety in simulation learning. The thesis ends with the question of whether simulation learning can be changed for the better and if so, how.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

phd

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

University of East Anglia

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Taylor, Natasha

Language dc:language

en