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Clinical Development

As paramedic practice becomes increasingly professionalized, paramedics are becoming more responsible for integrating skills and knowledge. Continuing education is an essential aspect of the fast-moving, specialized care that paramedics provide.

Continuing Medical Education

At the RPPEO, we use two annual "core" CME blocks to provide practise, knowledge and training for paramedics. The Spring CME period begins early in April each year and closes in June. It's meant to provide 8 hours of structured education for paramedics. While this represents a mandatory education event for ACPs, Primary Care Paramedics can also attend and we include PCP content. Fall CME begins in September and runs until January of the next year, offering 8 hours of education to both Primary Care and Advanced Care Paramedics.

The RPPEO uses principles of adult learning  to make engaging interactive curriculum for paramedic core CME. We quickly switched to online only learning in 2020 with the advent of the pandemic. It's been challenging to offer interesting, fun and useful learning that meets paramedic needs, but we're committed to making it better and better!

Elective CME

The RPPEO provides many elective CME opportunities for PCP and ACP clinicians, often through recognizing the educational content of specialized courses, workshops and conferences.

When we're assessing content for electives, we look at how the educational event relates to the 6 integrated roles of the Paramedic: clinician, professional, educator, advocate, team member, and reflective practitioner. In fact, we use this concept of the interconnected roles of the Paramedic in all of our educational planning and development.

ACPs require 8 hours of elective CME annually. The RPPEO encourages PCPs to use elective educational opportunities to round out their clinical development each year.

Excellence Highlight

Adult continuing clinical education for paramedics

We've partnered with St. Francis Xavier University to provide adult education courses to our staff to ensure we're creating the best learning opportunities for paramedics. ​

The Education team works increasingly in lock-step with our Quality & Patient Safety department. This way, we'll be able to identify clinical issues that would benefit from educational intervention and examine whether our education made a difference in safety and quality of care.

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CQI Electronic Databases

Key Electronic Databases

Recommended electroninc databases for your research.

  • PubMed

    PubMed comprises more than 28 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.

    Visit Site

  • The Cochrane Library

    Trusted evidence.
    Informed decisions.
    Better health.

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  • Medscape

    Medscape is a website providing access to medical information for clinicians and the general public. The organization also provides continuing education for physicians and health professionals.

    Visit Site

  • Google Scholar

    Google Scholar allows you to search for scholarly literature, including peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from all areas of research.

    Visit Site

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CQI External Links

Research Links

  • PREHOSPITAL EVIDENCE BASED PRACTICE (PEP)

    The Prehospital Evidence Based Practice (PEP) PEP is a collaborative effort of Canadian and international EMS Clinicians (paramedics, physicians, nurses and other allied health professionals). PEP is sponsored and managed by the Dalhousie University Department of Emergency Medicine Division of EMS, and Emergency Health Services Nova Scotia.

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  • UCLA Prehospital Care and Research Forum

    "The Prehospital Care Research Forum is dedicated to fostering and improving research in EMS. Below you will find select podcasts discussing current research that affects EMS. These podcasts are meant to review methodology and applicability to prehospital care, promote healthy and respectful discussions, and inspire new research."

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  • Annals of Emergency Medicine

    Audio and Podcasting Archives

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  • Emergency Medicine Journal Jams

    Journal Jam is the EM Cases podcast that brings together leading EM researchers, EM educators and EM clinicians from around the world to discuss practice-changing EM articles; with your hosts Anton Helman & Teresa Chan. Together, we’re smarter!

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  • EM Ottawa – Emergency Medicine Ottawa

    This is the official blog for the Department of Emergency Medicine at the University of Ottawa. Our main goal is to share the results of our monthly Journal Club for people to view and for our staff/residents to have as a resource if the need arises to review the content. The scores and analysis of each article are derived from an initial critical review of the literature by a single reviewer, followed by a group discussion.

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  • KeyLIME - Key Literature in Medical Education

    Bringing the main points of a medical education article in a 20 minute podcast.

    "Key Literature in Medical Education (KeyLIME) is a bi-weekly podcast produced by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. Articles that are important, innovative, or will impact your educational practice are discussed."

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  • Research & Reviews in the Fastlane

    Research and Reviews in the FastLane: where experts worldwide tell us what they think is worth reading from the emergency medicine and crit care literature.

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  • The Skeptics Guide to Emergency Medicine

    The Skeptics’ Guide to Emergency Medicine (SGEM) is a knowledge translation (KT) project. The goal of the SGEM is to shorten the KT window from over ten years down to less than one year. It does this by turning traditional medical education on its head.

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  • The Bottom Line

    This site has been built to create a compendium of all the landmark papers which are shaping the way we manage our critically ill patients. Each paper has been summarised and critiqued using a standard template and ends with a 'bottom line' paragraph to allow a quick reminder of the key points.

    Read more

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CQI Guides & Tools

Research Guidelines

  • Phase 1: Planning your Research

    FORMULATE THE RESEARCH QUESTION:

    Where do Ideas for Research come from?

    Your interests and experience! Research is time consuming so it is best to begin with a topic that fascinates you. Think of your clinical experience and ask yourself:

    1. Why are things done this way?
    2. What is the process from which this situation arose?
    3. What would happen if…?
    Literature: JEMS articles can be helpful in alerting researchers to clinical trends or issues of clinical importance. Published research reports may suggest problem areas, identify limitations and recommend future research topics. 
    A research question should address the FINER criteria:

    1. Feasible (in terms of time, money, expertise, scope, etc.)
    2. Interesting
    3. Novel (confirms, refutes or extends previous research)
    4. Ethical
    5. Relevant
    A research question should address the PICO criteria:

    • Population of interest (what specific patient population are you interested in?)
    • Intervention being studied (if applicable)
    • Comparison group
    • Outcome of interest (what do you intend to measure, accomplish, improve or effect?)
    PICO criteria are useful to use in the development of a specific research question. Quite often, timing is added to denote the period of time over which a study is conducted. For more information on well-built clinical questions using PICO, click on the following link: https://healthlinks.washington.edu/ebp/pico.html

    Example of a Research Question:

    "What is the effect of an information and emotional support intervention (I) on the anxiety levels (O) of spouses of ICU patients (P) in the first 72 hours post admission? [C: spouses of ICU patients that do not receive support intervention]"
    A research question should contain a stem word (what, when, where, how, why).

    PERFORM A LITERATURE REVIEW

    It’s necessary to learn as much as possible about the status quo of current procedures relating to the research topic and to review existing practice guidelines or protocols.

    1. Literature Searching in 10 Steps
    2. How to perform a literature search

    DESIGN THE STUDY METHODS

    1. Select the design
    2. Determine the sample
    3. Select the measures
    4. Plan statistical analyses
    5. Design procedures
    6. Get feedback from your colleagues!
    7. Research Methods – Knowledge Base is a comprehensive web-based textbook that covers the entire research process including: sampling, measurement, research design and data analysis.

    OBTAIN ETHICS APPROVAL

    When humans are used as study participants, care must be exercised in ensuring that the rights of those humans are protected. Research Ethics Boards (REBs) ensure that ethical guidelines are met and followed in research activities.

    1. Ottawa Hospital Research Ethics Board (OHREB)
    2. OHREB sample consent & information sheet

    APPLY FOR FUNDING

    Guidebook for New Principal Investigators – CIHR
  • Phase 2: Conducting the research

    • Collect the Data
    • Analyze the Data
  • Phase 3: Disseminating the research

    Prepare Manuscript for Publication

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