Michelle Louise O'Toole

Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland | RCSI · School of Medicine/Simulation

Background Compared to other occupational groups, first responders experience worse mental health outcomes due to duty-related trauma and occupational stressors. Despite their best efforts, they bring stress home. Consequently, first responders and the people they rely on for support, suffer from increased psychosocial difficulties, experiencing st...

Background Research is challenging in the unpredictable out-of-hospital setting and internationally research capacity and culture in paramedicine has developed slowly. In Ireland significant progress in education and research has been made in recent years and a national research strategy is currently being developed by the statutory regulator, the...

Background Paramedicine is a dynamic profession which has evolved from a “treat and transport” service into a complex network of health professionals working in a diverse range of clinical roles. Research is challenging in the paramedicine context, and internationally, research capacity and culture has developed slowly. International examples of re...

A key component to the continued development of any profession is a strong research culture. For paramedicine, a research culture that acknowledges the uniqueness of the out-of-hospital setting allows clinical practice to develop. Recent international publications investigating paramedicine research outputs demonstrated that Ireland was not strongl...

Background Paramedicine research and education has progressed significantly over the past two decades in Ireland. The Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Council recently commissioned a research team to develop a new National Research Strategy for Irish paramedicine. The strategy will serve to build research capacity and establish research priorities into...

The objective of this scoping review is to explore existing psychoeducational training programmes that prepare family members of first responders to a) recognise the signs of declining mental health in their loved ones and b) provide basic psychosocial support following difficult workplace events. We will also examine how these training interventio...

Purpose: In simulation-based education (SBE), educators integrate their professional experiences to prepare learners for real world practice and may embed unproductive stereotypical biases. Although learning culture influences educational practices, the interactions between professional culture and SBE remain less clear. This study explores how pr...

Background: Providing feedback is a key aspect of simulated participants' (SPs) educational work. In teaching contexts, the ability to provide feedback to learners is central to their role. Suboptimal feedback practices may deny learners the valuable feedback they need to learn and improve. This scoping review systematically maps the evidence rela...

Introduction: The Irish Paramedicine Education and Research Network (IPERN) is dedicated to collaboratively building research culture and research capacity for out-of-hospital care in Ireland and internationally. IPERN is led by an inter-professional team of paramedics, nurses, doctors, allied health professionals and scientists. IPERN supports cli...

Introduction As the paramedic profession continues to grow and evolve, a shift from purely reactive to holistic patient care models is required. As the first and often the only point of medical contact for many patients from marginalised and under-served populations, the paramedic role and its potential future implications in caring for these patie...

Introduction: As the paramedic profession continues to grow and evolve, a shift from reactive to holistic patient care models is required. As the first and often the only point of medical contact for many patients from marginalized and under-served populations, the paramedic role, and its potential future implications in caring for these patients n...

Purpose: Despite the demonstrated value of simulated participant (SP) feedback, we are only beginning to understand how to optimize SPs' feedback practices for communication skills and strengthen their role as educators. SPs portray roles and engage in feedback practices to support simulated-based learning for communication skills training. SPs co...

First responders, such as paramedics and firefighters, encounter duty-related traumatic exposures, which can lead to post-traumatic stress (PTS). Although social support protects against PTS, we know little about how first responders’ families, spouses/partners, friends, and care-partners (i.e., ‘trusted others’) provide social support. This narrat...

Background: First responders regularly encounter both operational stressors and potentially traumatic events, increasing their risk of mental health issues (Declercq et al., 2011). Due to unique cultural complexities, they turn mostly to peers for early psychosocial support (Isaac & Buchanan, 2021). However, peer support and/or mental health assist...