Research out of Drexel University’s Dornsife School of Public Health determined that emergency medical technicians and paramedics are 14 times more likely to be violently injured on the job than the firefighters they work alongside.
By comparing statistics gathered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency-funded Firefighter Injury Research and Safety Trends (FIRST) project and speaking with a group of paramedics who had been injured by patients, the Drexel researchers found that assault-related injuries are often not reported, not acknowledged by administration and therefore they are internalized by the workers as a “part of the job.”
“First responders are an interesting group. They go in because they want to help, and when they go in they encounter these situations they never got training for,” said Jennifer Taylor, PhD, MPH,CPPS, associate professor in the Dornsife School of Public Health, and lead investigator on “Expecting the Unexpected: A Mixed Methods Study of Violence to EMS Responders in an Urban Fire Department.”