EMT-B Federal Requirement

[Just Plain Ruff]

My experience is strictly anecdotal. Remember my 440 hour course was 20 years or so ago.

But my main criticism of the 190 hour course is why the hell didn't I go throgh that one instead of spending 32 hours a week in a class that now is being taught for 190 hours and they are teaching these students to do more stuff than my basic emt class taught me.

Granted, our class had many other extras that I'll bet the EMT classes today do not have. for example

Rapelling/rope rescue

Water rescue (in a pool, in a moderately flowing river and in a lake)

2 classes on extrication (one on cars and the other on large farm machinery and other large vehicles)

8 hours on scene safety(our class was taught by a medic/cop

hours and hours of vehicle operations

and oodles of test prep for the state test (we had a 96% state of missouri practical test pass rate)

Self defense course

and several large scale exercises with the entire class of 40 students participating (one was a school shooting and the other was a building collapse).

And we put on a high school drunk driving demonstration with MADD>

All that for 600 bucks.

Edited March 28, 2014 by Ruffmeister Paramedic

[chbare]

Ohh, slippery slope. Is there any literature to support EMS even existing in cases other than early defib, out of hospital cardiac arrest? The trauma literature is pretty dismal.

Agreed, we need to do better job of defining and justifying our existence. The literature is rather scant when it comes to many aspects of out of hospital care.

[ERDoc]

Well, someone has to get them to the hospital and who could do it better than the ambulance driver? (ERDoc ducks and covers).

[chbare]

There is a modest amount of evidence outside of the United States such as the OPALS study in regards to respiratory patients.

[Just Plain Ruff]

Well, someone has to get them to the hospital and who could do it better than the firefighter hero ambulance driver? (ERDoc ducks and covers).

I corrected your statement doc.

[Finney]

Again to reiterate, I am not at all suggesting that 190 hours is too much or even an adequate amount of time required. And also I stated that I am not an EMT and I should also say that I do not have plans to become one in the near future. I am currently working in a state government position and was doing some research on topics that were being brought up in my representative's district. I cannot speak directly to the numbers of drops, but it seems as though the representative and his district are concerned about the drops. Again, this is not a request for a cut on the amount of time required, rather seeking an alternative method to get those hours. I understand that EMT training may not be the best thing to do online, even if it is just the memorization of some information (of course only speaking of non-clinical training). I was more interested in seeing if there were any out-of-state (out of NY) counterparts that were different from the traditional classroom approach.

Edited March 31, 2014 by Finney

[ERDoc]

I can't help you with the online stuff, but if you want an idea of what works to fix the issue of retention, look to Long Island, especially Suffolk County. I think you will be hard pressed to find any place that allows an original certification to be done online. It is one of those things that is best taught hands-on, even in the classroom.

[paramedicmike]

Perhaps if you had made it more clear from the beginning who you were and your reason for posting (i.e. research for state government purposes) you would have gotten more straight forward responses. Your lack of transparency is concerning.

In what capacity do you work in state government? Do you work for the representative in question? What representative? What district? What's the purpose of your research? What is the goal of your research?

Perhaps you can convince your representative that EMS is a vital community service and that efforts should be made to adequately fund a full time paid EMS service to cover his district.

There are no non-traditional training programs I'm aware of regarding initial EMT training.

MTA: As has been stated a couple times so far, this is something that is best done in person. Initial EMT training is not something that lends itself to online instruction. Your representative needs to be aware of this.

Edited March 31, 2014 by paramedicmike

[island emt]

now that we have an idea of what your goals are, it is a little easier to provide more information.

Initial EMT Basic training is not something that can be acquired online or by other form of distance education.

There is a very large hands on assessment portion of the class that occurs on a nightly basis to go with the evenings lecture of didactic material.

In other words we give you a lecture on airway management and then go to a hands on portion to teach those skills to assess, control and intervene using various airway adjuncts.

The entire course works this way.

Read the subject material, in the book prior to the class,

receive the lecture on the subject ,

learn the hands on skill portion of the subject.

What many places have in place is to regionalize training classes and continuing education classes. Having trained instructor co-ordinators teaching locally gets the most bang for the buck to smaller departments in rural areas.

An example: My wife is a certified IC and can teach initial EMT education courses and continuing education courses locally.

We were required to take an IC course along with maintaining our EMS licenses.

to get this certification requires taking an 80 hour course that deals mainly with adult education tactics & skills along with honing the ability to teach EMS knowledge.skills

She has a masters in education an Intermediate EMS license & a BSN.

Is she over qualified to teach EMS courses?

Maybe, unless you want to up the ante and improve the level of education that your prehospital providers bring to your door at 3 AM when someone you love is in a crisis.

the next important component is to make sure that once you have students obtain their license to practice , they maintain their knowledge and receive regular education in the ever changing practice of prehospital medicine.

This is not something you can take a short adult ed class in and then go forward happily ever after.

I'd wager that many of us here at the City receive in excess of a hundred hours continuing education every year. in an effort to remain at the top of our profession.

enough info for you to ruminate on for a while and take back to your representative boss.

[Just Plain Ruff]

Island could have described the State of Missouri as well. In order for me to teach any form of Cont ed, I had to get my instructor cert which was 80 hours of classroom focusing on what Island's wife focused on.

And I just finished my 75th hour of continuing education this year. Granted that I am re-certing in my medic and need to play catchup but I'll have well over 200 hours over the next 6 months if you add in PALS, ACLS, CPR and ITLS and maybe NALS and ABLS

Hell if I decide to do it I might even get that DAN Cert that another member is bragging about.

And to top it off, In order to get my Certificate in Project Management I'll be taking 40 more hours of Project management education and don't even ask me about my continuing education for my re-Certification for my current IT job. Upwards of 80 more hours.

I feel like a student again.