Lisa Hobbs

Paramedic

Australia

Doctorate Title: Women in Paramedicine: Exploring the experiences of female paramedics in Australia through creative research.

Doctorate Description: Over the past four decades ambulance service culture in Australia has shifted from being male dominated, to accepting female paramedic recruits, to the majority of base level paramedics now being women. The lived experiences of women who have worked within the discipline of paramedicine in Australia are anecdotal or unreported. This study seeks to address the dearth of literature about female paramedic experiences in Australia and assist women to feel that their stories have been heard, acknowledged and learned from. A multi method approach utilising the subsets of Creative Arts Based Research (Leavy, 2020) and Constructivist Grounded Theory (Charmaz, 2014), has been selected for this study. This combination of methods will build a comprehensive understanding of the experiences and perspectives of Australian female paramedics who have been a part of the gradual feminisation of Australian ambulance service culture. The first phase of the study consists of an online survey which gathers participant demographics and begins to collect data specific to participant experiences and perceptions about health and wellbeing, opportunities, challenges and advantages of women working in this traditionally male dominated workplace. Identification of the survey results requiring further exploration will be identified during the data analysis, which will then guide the second phase (semi-structured interview with creative element) of the study to explore the rich and deep experiences of women working in the Australian paramedic profession. As there are no identifiable studies on these types of experiences of Australian female paramedics, this study has potential to generate new knowledge and to fill a gap in paramedicine literature.

References:

Charmaz, K. (2014). Constructing grounded theory. sage.

Leavy, P. (2020). Method meets art: Arts-based research practice. Guilford Publications.