Personality, social support, stress, and coping in a sample of Canadian paramedics

The authors’ finding that Canadian paramedics reported high levels of stress concurrent with evidence of predisposed resilience, suggests that emergency workers who, though predisposed towards stability, can find themselves doing too much with too little. Deficits in social support, and the perception that supervisors and employer-sponsored mental health services cannot be relied on, adds to the view of a stressful and alienating workplace. As findings suggest that there is little to be done at selection to identify more robust candidates, the focus should be on ameliorating negative workplace demands and especially on the identification of those factors feeding perceptions of not being supported.