To What Extent Does Shift Work Contribute to the Stress of Working as Essay - 1

To What Extent Does Shift Work Contribute to the Stress of Working as a Paramedic in Adelaide - Essay Example I can also access them when working in order to observe them in their natural working environment and get the feeling of what stress they are encountering as they work in their different shifts (both night and day shifts and the difference between these two shifts).   The sampling technique will be simple random. This is convenient because I will not be biased when conducting the field research and the results will ensure diversity in conditions, the gender of the paramedics and other important factors that other sampling techniques may overlook. I will randomly choose the workstations of the paramedics and then also randomly chose the paramedics I will be observing and those I will be interviewing and minimize biases and sampling error. I will carry out 3 observations (of each shift since the shifts are of 8hours), 7 different interviews (one of the interviews will be for the supervisor and who is also the one in charge of the shifts and organizes the duty calendar), while the other six will be for the different paramedics (randomly chosen). Lastly, I will carry out a focus group discussion that will include all the available paramedics and this will be aimed at getting the general feeling about the shifts not captured in the interviews. Some of the structured interview questions will include: what shift they currently are in? How long does it take before there is a rotation of the shift? Which of the three shifts is the toughest on both the physical and mental strength? Is there a difference health wise of the shifts (this includes having headaches, fatigue, anger, over or under eating, depression or drugs and substance abuse). The rest of the questions will be unstructured in order to get more explanations. One of the ethical problems I foresee is that the interviewees may refuse to be honest due to fear of lack of confidentiality and even anonymity even though this will be assured to them. The other is on the issue of getting voluntary participants to participate in the focus group and especially if the supervisor will be around watching them.  Ã‚