ADVANCED LIFE SUPPORT SKILLS

A Proposal To Establish And Evaluate The Frequency Of Advanced Life Support (A.L.S.) Skills Use Within The United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) Airforce Flight Paramedic Crewmen

A Proposal To Establish And Evaluate The Frequency Of Advanced Life Support (A.L.S.) Skills Use Within The United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.) Airforce Flight Paramedic Crewmen

Literature review

Human skills vary greatly and include perceptual motor skills including typing skills, athletic skills, musical skills and cognitive skills such as computer editing and playing chess. The development of skill requires a large amount of deliberate practice. Skills are always tested by the subject's ability to perform the requisite activity at some level of competence [1]. Skill memories are learned motor behaviors. The complex motor (or psychomotor) skills that would be used during advanced life support and the provision of critical care, involve the integration of motor patterns in the cerebral nuclei, cerebral cortex and cerebellum [2].

The degree of competence to which an acquired skill is retained through the passage of time is called “skill retention” and the degree of loss of competence of a skill is called “skill decay” [3]. Retention of skill proficiency is directly related to the frequency of use of that particular skill [4]. Payne et al. also found that recall performance is directly related to the number of tests administered for the specific skill, as the act of recalling increases the accessibility of the skill.

Skill can be thought of as goal-oriented behavior that is well-organized and learned through practice, rather than being an automatic physiological response, argued Proctor and Dutta in 1995. Conceived of in this way, skill has been a topic of interest to organizational theorists because of its relationship to economic performance at individual, organizational, and national levels. It is also of interest because of its implications for the organization, control, and reward of work. Likewise, temporal changes in levels of skill have also been the object of study. From a more critical perspective, the social and political dimensions of skill have also attracted attention and called into question many apparently commonsense assumptions about the concept.

Conceptual Overview

Conceptualizations of skill have reflected the influence of different traditions of academic inquiry, each with a different focus and a different approach to the topic. A useful starting point is to distinguish between approaches that take skill to be an attribute of the individual and those that see it as an attribute of a work role.

Skill as an Attribute of the Individual

The idea of skill as something inherent in individuals, and which individuals bring to their jobs, characterizes much research into skill. It is typical of, for example, psychological studies of skill and skilled performance. Early instances of such research, dating back to the 19th century, examined skill acquisition and the improvement in performance that comes with practice. Subsequent research has led to a number of models of skill acquisition and has investigated other aspects of skilled performance, such as transfer of learning and situational influences. It has also been extended to include cognitive skills, ...