Structural conditions influencing postgraduate education uptake by South African Emergency Care Practitioners

Abstract

Background: The prehospital field of Emergency Medical Care urgently requires a generation of practitioners capable of engaging in research and advancing the profession through evidence-based practice. The paucity of prehospital-specific research necessitates a deeper understanding of the factors that influence agency in Emergency Care Practitioners (ECPs) to pursue or eschew postgraduate education, as this impacts the development of the prehospital emergency medical care field in South Africa. Objective: To identify the structural conditions that influence Emergency Care Practitioners to pursue or eschew postgraduate education. Methods: This study employed a mixed-method exploratory sequential research design, integrating a qualitative phase framed by social realism to explore the reasons behind Emergency Care Practitioners’ motivations to pursue or eschew postgraduate education. This phase included six focus group discussions and two individual semi-structured interviews with 49 and two (2) participants respectively. The data obtained informed a broader subsequent quantitative phase. Thematic analysis was employed to analyse the qualitative data. Results: Three themes were identified from the data. Socio-economic conditions, a poor fit of academic identity in the EMS profession, and the interaction between academic and operational structures motivated Emergency Care Practitioners to eschew postgraduate education. Conclusion: Structural conditions owing to the socio-economic circumstances, the nature of the EMS profession and the academic world experienced within the South African prehospital milieu collectively motivated Emergency Care Practitioners to eschew postgraduate education. These findings give the EMS profession insight into the structural conditions that need to be addressed to improve the postgraduate-seeking behaviour of ECPs.