CPC Clinician Wellness and Safety 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: The EMS community frequently uses the phrase 'eating our own.' This refers to MOST specifically to which workplace issue?
- Overworked providers skipping meals
- Horizontal hostility and bullying among coworkers (Correct answer)
- Competitive scheduling practices
- Lack of adequate nutrition education for field providers
Correct answer: Horizontal hostility and bullying among coworkers
Horizontal hostility describes bullying, hazing, or undermining behavior between peers at the same organizational level, which is a recognized wellness issue in EMS.
Question 2: Which sleep hygiene practice is MOST recommended for EMS shift workers to minimize circadian disruption?
- Using bright lights during day sleep to maintain alertness
- Maintaining a consistent pre-sleep routine and minimizing light exposure before sleep (Correct answer)
- Consuming caffeine within 2 hours of a scheduled sleep period
- Relying on weekend recovery sleep to compensate for weekday deficits
Correct answer: Maintaining a consistent pre-sleep routine and minimizing light exposure before sleep
Consistent pre-sleep rituals and darkness signal the brain to produce melatonin, improving sleep quality despite irregular schedules.
Question 3: A community paramedic feels increasingly unable to empathize with patients and notices they are emotionally numb after hearing about patient suffering. This MOST likely reflects:
- Compassion satisfaction
- Compassion fatigue (Correct answer)
- Secondary traumatic stress disorder
- Vicarious trauma
Correct answer: Compassion fatigue
Compassion fatigue is characterized by a gradual erosion of empathy and emotional numbing resulting from the cumulative burden of caring for others.
Question 4: Under OSHA's Bloodborne Pathogens Standard (29 CFR 1910.1030), employers are required to offer hepatitis B vaccination to at-risk employees at:
- The employee's expense within 10 days of hire
- No cost to the employee within 10 working days of initial assignment (Correct answer)
- No cost, but only after a documented needlestick injury
- The employee's expense after a 90-day probationary period
Correct answer: No cost to the employee within 10 working days of initial assignment
OSHA mandates that hepatitis B vaccination be offered at no cost within 10 working days of initial assignment to at-risk roles.
Question 5: When documenting a workplace injury, which piece of information is LEAST critical to include in the initial incident report?
- Date, time, and location of the incident
- Names of witnesses present
- Provider's personal opinion about management competence (Correct answer)
- Description of the mechanism of injury
Correct answer: Provider's personal opinion about management competence
Incident reports should contain objective, factual information; subjective opinions about management are inappropriate and potentially legally harmful.
Question 6: Which of the following physical health risks is MOST elevated in EMS providers compared to the general public?
- Type 1 diabetes mellitus
- Cardiovascular disease (Correct answer)
- Autoimmune thyroid disease
- Osteoporosis
Correct answer: Cardiovascular disease
EMS providers have significantly higher rates of cardiovascular disease due to shift work, sleep deprivation, chronic stress, and sedentary time between calls.
Question 7: A community paramedic responds to a hostile domestic situation where they feel personally threatened. According to scene safety principles, the provider should FIRST:
- Attempt to de-escalate the aggressor verbally
- Enter and treat the patient as quickly as possible to reduce exposure time
- Retreat to a safe location and wait for law enforcement to secure the scene (Correct answer)
- Request police backup while continuing to provide care
Correct answer: Retreat to a safe location and wait for law enforcement to secure the scene
Scene safety takes absolute priority; providers must not enter or should retreat from unsafe scenes until law enforcement declares it secure.
CPC Clinician Wellness and Safety 3
The EMS community frequently uses the phrase 'eating our own.' This refers to MOST specifically to which workplace issue?