Continuing Education Improves Performance on the International Paramedic Registry Cognitive Exam in Latin-American Countries

Introduction—Latin-American countries have varying educational processes for medical care professionals. A review of the literature revealed the common types of continuing education included repetitive task training and face-to-face programs. The International Paramedic Registry (IPR) cognitive exam provides data to understand the level of knowledge in all areas of prehospital medicine throughout Latin America.

Objective—To understand if CE is the variable that differentiates the results of the IPR cognitive exam.

Methods—A total of 507 participants attempted the IPR cognitive exam in Spanish. A subsample of 183 (36.23%) from Mexico, Colombia, and Panama was considered for analysis (listwise deletion was used to remove cases with incomplete data). CE was defined as any education post-graduation.

Results—The mean score of the IPR test was 56.72% (SD=8.4), stratifying data by level of education. An ANOVA test showed a nonsignificant difference between level of education and IPR test global score (p=0.236). Analyzing by area of knowledge, the data show a significant difference in the pediatric area score (p=0.013) between providers who graduated with a bachelor’s degree or three years of university education. In the analysis of CE hours, 50.3% had fewer than 100 hours, 26.8% 100–500 hours, 12.6% 500–1,000 hours, 2.7% 1,000—1,500 hours, 2.7% 1,500—2,000 hours, and 4.9 % 2,000 hours or more. The data of students receiving fewer than 1,000 hours of CE represented 89.6% of the sample. An ANOVA test showed a significant difference between CE hours and score in IPR test (p=0.019). A post-hoc Tukey test located an improvement in IPR scores among the group having 100–500 hours (p=0.022) of CE.

Conclusion—This study showed no significant difference between level of CE and IPR exam score. Providers with fewer than 500 hours of lifetime CE performed significantly better on an international cognitive exam. More research is needed to determine the amount and types of education of EMS providers in Latin America.