Development emergency medical technician professional competence perception scale and investigation of emergency medical technician students professional competence perceptions

In the research, it was planned to develop a valid and reliable measurement tool in order to examine the professional competence perceptions of the Emergency Medicine Technicians who are or are candidates to continue their profession, to examine the professional competence perceptions of the Emergency Medicine Technicians and to examine the mediating effect of integration on the effect of professional self-esteem on the perception of professional competence. In the methodological, descriptive and correlational research design, the sample of the research conducted between April and July 2022 consists of students studying in the last year of the Vocational School of Health Services First and Emergency Aid Program in 18 universities in the 2021-2022 academic year (n=1070). Demographic and Departmental Information Form, Emergency Medical Technician Professional Competence Perception Scale (ATT-MYAÖ), Professional Self-Esteem Scale, UTRECHT Work Integration Scale-Student Form and Self-Efficacy-Efficacy Scale were used to collect data. IBM SPSS 26.0 and AMOS 24.0 package program were used in the analysis of the data. In order to prove the psychometric properties of the measurement tool, a structure consisting of 66 items and 4 sub-dimensions was obtained, which explained 70,453% of the total variance in the exploratory factor analysis. Findings obtained from confirmatory factor analysis showed the suitability of the model with 65 items and 4 factors (RMSEA 0,053; χ2/df 1,993). The ATT-MYAÖ item-total test correlation values were found to be above 0,30, and the Cronbach's alpha coefficient was found to be 0,974. It was seen that the departmental and some demographic characteristics of the participants affected the ATT-MYAÖ score, as the professional self-esteem scores increased, the integration and professional competence perception scores increased, but the integration did not have a mediating effect on the effect of professional self-esteem on the perception of professional competence. It has been determined that the Emergency Medical Technician Professional Competence Perception Scale (ATT-MYAÖ) is a valid and reliable measurement tool in examining the professional competence perception levels of emergency medicine technicians who continue and are candidates to continue their profession. Keywords: Emergency medicine technician; Professional self-esteem; Perception of professional competence; Scale development