Judy Sheahan

Paramedic

South Africa

Doctorate Title: Developing a professional academic identity: An in-depth exploration of the transition process from EMS clinician to EMS academic in South Africa.

Doctorate Description: The transition from clinician to educator has widely been described as a very challenging process for healthcare professionals, most of the time with little to no formalised support. The extent of how this transition period is experienced by South African emergency medical services (EMS) personnel is unknown. I believe an in-depth exploration of this transition period is necessary in order to develop contextually relevant support, enhance the quality of EMS education, and contribute to professionalisation of the EMS in South Africa.

The plan for this PhD project is a series of three studies.

Study one is a scoping review. The scoping review aims to answer the following research question: What does academia and the roles of educator and academic mean in the EMS?

Study two will use constructivist grounded theory methodology. A series of interviews with EMS educator/academics aims to address the following study objective: Identifying factors that enable and/or inhibit academic actualisation amongst EMS educators in South Africa, including if academic actualisation has spatiotemporal affect.

Study three aims to utilise the results of the preceding two studies to develop an academic identity transition framework that is specifically applicable to the EMS in South Africa, and establish if academic actualisation and having an established professional academic identity contributes to professionalisation in the EMS.

Upon conclusion of the three studies, the research aims to develop a contextually relevant, evidence informed transition framework that will support South African EMS clinicians when they transition into academia.