Andy Lazar

Thanks for your thoughts. As I believe I mentioned above, I don't disagree with you at all and if you got the impression that the survey pushes one to think with a cookbook approach it was not an intentional one. The survey is meant to determine how people actually make their decisions and what kinds of memory they use to do that. I have only been an EMT for 6 years, however I completely understand the necessity to rely on experience sometimes rather than the cookbook approach. I apologize if you felt one was favored over the other but it wasn't mean that way. Thanks for helping out. Andy

Thanks for your feedback. If you could email me at ANL26@cornell.edu what you believe are all the incorrect types of treatment for the scenarios that would help me in making sure the survey is as accurate as possible. However, one thing to consider if you are an ALS provider is that all the answers are limited to BLS treatments so that both BLS and ALS providers could be incorporated and can fill out the survey. I hope in the future to make an ALS only survey since there are bunch more types of scenarios that could be used but the sample size would be too small to do it now. Hope this helps clarify.

Thank you everyone for all your feedback regarding the survey, however I would like to clarify that I personally am not trying to promote one type of treatment thinking whether it be following protocols exactly or utilizing more of your memory to treat patients. In fact, the hope of this research is to determine what type of memory providers actually use when treating patients and if providers use memory more based on past experiences or the gist of a previous event then perhaps the data can help change the way that EMTs are taught. I completely understand that this is quite a lofty goal and I by no means think this will do that but I believe that this is the first step in learning how pre-hospital providers make medical decisions. I hope that this helps clarify and if you have any more questions please feel free to email me at ANL26@cornell.edu. Andy

I am a graduate student at Cornell University currently working on a research masters degree focusing on memory and decision making in the pre-hospital setting. I have been an EMT and firefighter in New York State at multiple paid and volunteer agencies since 2006. From my experiences, pre-hospital care has been a large interest of mine and I decided to base my thesis on medical decision making in the pre-hospital (EMS) setting. The survey takes about 15-25 minutes, it is anonymous and is internet based so it can be completed from any computer. It has a couple of medical scenarios and then a bunch of other questions regarding how you personally make decisions as a pre-hospital provider. I would really appreciate if you were able to take some time out of your busy schedule and complete the survey. The link is: https://cornell.qual...71UB8rU2xfOgmeE If you know of any other pre-hospital providers, please forward this email to them and see if they can complete this survey. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via email at ANL26@cornell.edu. Andy