Self-assessment accuracy of undergraduate paramedic students

The ability for a health professional to accurately assess and reflect on their own performance is considered an essential skill to deliver safe and effective care. This skill should begin in the student phase and as such, the ability of undergraduate healthcare students to accurately self-assess their academic performance needs to be understood. While research exists on the self-assessment ability of medical students, this study aims to determine the accuracy of paramedic students in predicting their written examination performance and the factors that impact accuracy. This pilot study used a cross-sectional, pre/post-study design. Participants were recruited from years one, two and three from the Bachelor of Emergency Health or Bachelor of Emergency Health & Nursing programs at Monash University. Using questionnaires, students were asked to predict their examination performance at three points in time: before undertaking their mid- and end-of-semester written examinations and also after undertaking the mid-semester examination. Three hundred students (out of a population of 316) participated in one or more of the three stages of this study. Eighty-eight percent of participants were under 26 years old and 35% of participants were male. The study revealed undergraduate paramedic students possessed some ability to predict their examination performance in the mid-semester examinations with weak correlation in the preexamination prediction (p=0.038, r=0.147) and moderate correlation in the post-exam prediction (p=