Table 3.

Key Theme: Ethical Consideration

	Quote	Participant
Individual Patient Risk versus Public Good
	It’s a risk-benefit thing. Does it benefit the greater public good to do it this way [EFIC research]? And I personally think that it does. If we’re gonna study something like not providing any care to these people, or dragging them by their hair to the hospital, or something like that, obviously not, but this is something that could potentially serve the greater public good.	Paramedic, RAA employee 4–5 years
	But just like with everything good that we find, you know, there are things that can be harmful and what do you say to the people who are harmed by the new things that we try to do?.	Paramedic, RAA employee 4–5 years
	…Risk can sometimes be greater than the possible benefit.	EMT, RAA employee 6 or more years
	Is [research] wonderfully perfect? No. It’s what needs to be done for us to move out of the dark ages.	Paramedic, RAA employee 4–5 years
Implied Consent and Informed Consent
	It’s one of those grey areas, whereas it’s a kind of implied consent where you know they would want us to do something to help…..we are not withholding our original protocol, we’re just taking one step before it and then we will fall back on our original protocol if that [experimental protocol] doesn’t work.	Paramedic, RAA employee 4–5 years
	But the fact is, in a study [like the EFIC study on-going during the time of our interviews], we would still be treating them [the patient] if the study weren’t there. We would still be giving them ‘A’ medication even if the study were not there. And we aren’t getting their consent for that anyway, we’re getting implied consent.	Paramedic, RAA employee 4–5 years
	I think you probably have a lot of medics out there that haven’t even thought about informed consent and not that they don’t care, but it’s just not at the forefront of their….you know, their attitude is, we’re doing something to save lives, this is a benefit to lots of people.	Paramedic, RAA employee 6 or more years
	You can’t always get consent from your patients that are unresponsive and don’t have the mental capacity to say yes or no. But I think in terms of a lay person you’re leaving out a really, really big part of what most people expect and that is to be informed and to give their permission and you don’t get that in this particular research [EFIC research].	Paramedic, RAA employee 4–5 years