Abstract
Many public safety workers functioning in various roles and operating across a variety of settings have been identified as having a higher risk for PTSD or PTSD symptomatology than the general population. The aims of this dissertation were to report the current prevalence rates of posttraumatic stress symptomatology (full and partial) and peritraumatic dissociation (PD) in a sample of urban paramedics (EMT-Ps) practicing in a municipally operated pre-hospital 911 system; explore some of the putative risk factors (e.g., age, experience) for the development of posttraumatic symptomatology in this sample; and examine whether a PTSD-PD link exists in this group. The measures used in this study were the Paramedic Demographic Survey (developed for this study), the Peritraumatic Dissociative Experiences Questionnaire (PDEQ; Marmar, Weiss, Metzler, & Delucchi, 1996) and the Screen for Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms (SPTSS; Carlson, 2001). Results from 77 completed sets of surveys were incl