We need more people too dumb to pass NREMT?

[Scaramedic]

Yesterday I couldn't spell EMT, but today thanks to the Fire department I is one.

:roll:

[kyle308]

everyones gonna like the test when a familys pet scorpion gets loose and no one nos how to treat the poor kid who found him

[Savoy6]

Of course a test with 100% pass is questionable too. Been there, saw it first hand. Some of you know what I mean.

How much is a state test going to cost to implement? I read the article and responded to the newspaper. Test compromise, test security, validation... Costly for an agency. One good law suit or a test compromise, and start from scratch. Good luck.

Of course some states hire out the process to inexperienced companies. That's a winning combination. Everyone is trying to get in on it. I guess the EMS Education Agenda for the Future and the EMS Agenda for the Future are foreign to these folks.

A single national test is necessary. one size can fit all. Coral snakes?? gee, chief. I'd like my guys to know what hemotoxins cause and neuro toxins cause. people keep all kinds of exotic animals around, maybe not in his town. EMS professionals need a rounded base of knowledge.

What if ?- his department deploys folks to the south for a disaster. Guess what you find, coral snakes, fire ants, armadillos, lions, tigers and bears, oh my!! Plus sand. A good place to bury your head.

In my "official" civilian EMT course in Mississippi in 1975, the nurse teaching didn't teach frostbite or hypothermia, she said we'd never see it. Gosh, those nights on the flight line in Biloxi off loading patients from aircraft, in the wind and cold always made me remember that. So did the snowstorm in 1977 that caused us to close the firing range.Or the week in January I spent on the Black Sea. Sorry, I digress.

Unfortunately when a fire chief sticks his head up like this, he should be shot at. It makes it look like a fire service against the rest of EMS situation. Maybe the situation is isolated to him, but it is becoming a problem in other parts of the country too. Not all of the Fire Service is like that. Soo, let's focus on him.

Maybe he should hire from outside his ranks.For many years the fire department I served with did just that. they now have some home grown medics, but for some time they hired from out of town. Being an out-of-towner has it's own inherent problems too.

Paramedics aren't, and thank God should not be, a dime a dozen. Dilution is not the solution(Catchy, huh?)

There's the old technician vs clinician problem. Here I'm mainly speaking of Paramedic education, not paramedic training. When we still keep it simple, the product will be stupid, we'll never be a profession.

OK, I'll go be a hermit again and hibernate.

[AnatomyChick]

Nice to hear from you Savoy...I couldn't agree more... the solution is not to dilute down the courses or testing any more than it is (although, I will admit that I thought the State written was more of a challenge than the NR seems to be.... ah, those were the days), heaven forbid that we encourage, nay, INSIST that our EMS providers are meeting "minimum" entry requirements. This whole thing sounds to me like nothing more than a HUGE excuse for not doing things right in the first place..... UGH... Sometimes I wonder where we are headed as a profession.

[emtkelley]

We were discussing this in class the other night. I believe there is more to this story and will try to find out something if anyone is interested.

[Asysin2leads]

In teaching strategy, a good test should have a range of scores that when plotted with the percentage scored on the X axis and the number of scores on the Y axis, it should form a bell curve with the peak at 75%. If the bell curve is shifted to the left, you made the test too hard or did not teach the material well enough (or you are teaching morons, which probably happens more often than not), and if the bell curve is shifted to the right, you have made the test too easy. My ex-physics teacher once dropped that serious knowledge on us, too which one girl replied "Shouldn't you try and teach so that everyone gets an A?" Too which the teacher just chuckled and said, "No."

As I mentioned in another post, EMS is like a science or math test, either you know the answer or you don't Sure, we may quibble over certain studies and procedures, but the base facts are the base facts and you either studied them or you didn't. Illinois is either going to have to make their EMS more attractive to the right people, or just give their nozzleheads guns instead of medical kits. That way at last they can make their patient's deaths fairly painless and quick.

[JPINFV]

I would agree with that grading system if EMS was a curved class (that said, a straight scale with grade cutoffs that are clearly defined are better then using a curve). A test for a certification or license should be the minimum that we expect out of the people who have that cert or license. The test design should not be based off of a mean score, but a hard cutoff. If you don't make the cutoff, so sorry, try again next time. If the test was curved, then you would have test cycles that were easier then others (unless we can get enough people testing each cycle to invoke the statistical law of large numbers).

[EMT-B 55]

I live in Illinois.

The bottom line why the State wants to control the test is $$$$!.

They really do not care if the EM T's are recognized in other states.

Regarding the EMT-I exam Illinois presented, I heard from someone who took the exam and it was mostly about weapons of mass destruction, not an overall exam of the EMT-I knowledge.

[Ridryder 911]

I live in Illinois.

The bottom line why the State wants to control the test is $$$$!.

They really do not care if the EM T's are recognized in other states.

Regarding the EMT-I exam Illinois presented, I heard from someone who took the exam and it was mostly about weapons of mass destruction, not an overall exam of the EMT-I knowledge.

Hopefully, they will not attack with coral snakes and scorpions... otherwise Illinois will be up the creek without a paddle. :shock:

R/r 911

[EMT-B 55]

LOL! Thanks I needed that.

What gets me, there are scorpions in Illinois and coral snakes. They are in private homes or in zoos