Exploring paramedic personality profiles and the relationship with burnout and employment retention: A scoping review

Paramedics play a pivotal role in delivering emergency medical care, contributing to excellence in the prehospital environment and ensuring a seamless continuum of healthcare. Achieving this objective is subject to various factors. This review aims to explore, the relationship between paramedic personality profiles and key factors including stress, burnout and employment retention or attrition.

The JBI approach was used to perform a scoping review. Key words including paramedic* , ambulance* , personalit* , retention OR attrition and burnout OR stress were inserted into the search engines OVID, CINAHL Plus, Scopus, Web of Science Core Collection, Psychology ProQuest, and Nursing ProQuest. Titles and abstracts of 226 results were screened and inclusion and exclusion criteria applied. Full texts of the remaining 18 results were screened to inform the results.

Three themes emerged relevant to the objective including the correlation of neuroticism with stress and burnout, personality types and mental illness with the ability to cope during stressful situations and finally resilience and burnout with the intention to quit.

Further research should be completed into specific personality characteristics, including neuroticism, perfectionism, and excitability to facilitate the development of strategies aimed at improving the health and wellbeing of paramedics and EMT workers internationally.