Your opinion on a mandatory 2 year degree (version 2)?

[Dustdevil]

I find this new breed of supposedly educated paramedics don't do well when you have large scale triaging or large crowds in the ghetto threatening to kill you.

Well, we called BS on your assertion and you conveniently failed to address it.

You speak of this new breed of educated paramedics as if you have a tonne of experience with them. Sorry, but I very seriously doubt that you have worked with enough of them in Chicago to even know what you are talking about. You're just making ASSumptions that fit into your comfortable little niche.

You also appear to be intentionally confusing two very separate issues: education and experience. Your assertion that experience trumps education is a logical fallacy. It ASSumes that the two are mutually exclusive, which they are not. Nobody here is arguing against experience. We are merely saying that experience is a much better tool when it is preceeded by a sufficient educational foundation. In other words, you cannot compare somebody with four years experience to somebody with four years of education, because that is not the argument. To make an honest and intelligent argument (which you are failing miserably at), you have to compare somebody with four years experience to somebody with four years of education AND experience. I challenge you to show me that the one with education is going to be less proficient than the one without.

One thing that I think we may agree on is that education must be QUALITY education. From what I see of most EMS associates degree programmes, they suck. Their course load is poorly chosen and inadequate. That is where national standards must be implemented, as the NLN does for nursing schools. Simply having paramedic school and 30 extra hours of nonsense does not necessarily make a better medic, I agree. But you cannot intelligently making the argument that somebody with just a 6 month paramedic tech school is as well prepared for practise as somebody with that same training plus a year of anatomy and physiology, microbiology, chemistry, algebra, psychology, and sociology. And trying to do so just makes you look like an idiot.

[BEorP]

I find this new breed of supposedly educated paramedics don't do well when you have large scale triaging or large crowds in the ghetto threatening to kill you.

It must be in the third year of a B.Sc. program where they teach you that if the scene isn't safe you don't go in.

[Ridryder 911]

Having a title next to your name doesn't mean your a good paramedic,or experience in a low volume system!I see you guys are impressed with your credentials,love to see you perform under stressful situations!I find this new breed of supposedly educated paramedics don't do well when you have large scale triaging or large crowds in the ghetto threatening to kill you.They turn and run or just freeze and can't think straight, i guess you don't learn to read the streets in a book.But when the Ca Ca hits the fan, experience wins out!You're right i'm not much educated(associate 2 yr)!I've been in the ghetto foe 25 yrs by choice!

Because one works in a high volume does not make them any better, actually I have seen quite the opposite. Yes, you make more calls but have less time to perform aggressive care. I much rather have one that can handle a patient for a period of time and actually know what they are doing.

I must have missed that curriculum portion in trade schools that taught how to perform that special triage a special way. Ironically, in my area we had one of the largest MCI events next to 9/11 and performed excellent triage and MCI response. Enough, that is considered the "gold standard" to be taught now, so there goes your theory.

Education level has nothing to do with working the so called "ghetto". Street sense can be taught on any level of education. One does not need to be uneducated to stay alive in such areas, everyone has "bad areas" in their local area and develop street survival skills. Again, education level has nothing to do with each other.. it comes with experience, common sense, and the will to learn it.

Just because someone has the intergity to learn some basic sciences and learn English and other associated courses does not remove one from the ability to perform in heavy or dangerous areas, quite the opposite. The difference one might see is that when one does obtain an education they may prefer and have the choice of not having to work in such environment.

R/r 911

[ERDoc]

:banghead: I find myself doing this a lot after reading the posts on here lately. How can anyone think that experience trumps education. Granted education also requires experience to be useful. If education is so useless, why is it required of so many other fields? I would have much rather taken a 12 month night class to become a doctor, but for some reason, someone thought it would be important for me to go through 4 years of undergrad, 4 years of med school and 3 years of residnecy to become an ER doc. The problem with depending on experience alone is that you don't know when you are doing something wrong. You also don't know how to keep up on the latest research. How many EMT/medic classes taught students how to do a literature search, read a real research article or to do a critical appraisal of the article. Medicine is not a static field. Things are constantly changing and if you don't know how to read the literature you will not know how to treat your pts properly. Guess you could make the arguement that that is what your protocols are for, but then you are nothing more than a technician. Until the attitude that education is not importnat is changed, it will be hard to go any further.

[Just Plain Ruff]

OH MY GOD Chicagambo - STEP AWAY FROM THE KOOL-AID you are drinking in Chicago

Chicagambo I challenge you to work in a rural system and see if your ASSumptions hold water.

You make broad assumptions that your way is best. You'd rather work with someone who has less education background than one with more education?

Golly geepers pa, I only want someone who has minimal education to work with. But if he has more experience then thats even better.

I've worked with many many many providers of all different types. Experience is important but education is key. Take for example one medic I worked with in the past. she got her license in one of the earlier paramedic classes held in the state. She is a excellent paramedic skill wise but when it comes to books and keeping up with her requirements she did the minimum. She has a hard time comprehending why she is supposed to give one drug over another. She gives the med because it's in the protocols. Not educated but a good medic.

Another medic I've worked with is a awesome medic, he is book smart too.

Who would I prefer to work with, well the second medic because he's learned to think outside the box and has furthered his education beyond the 9 month paramedic class.

As for this new age paramedic you are criticizing, you are incorrect. experience is nothing without education to back it up.

Triaging is done the same all over right? I thought there was a standard or did I miss that while going through my masters degree program????

The more education you have the more ability you are to critically think instead of doing cook book medicine. You cannot fulfill your commitment to patients if you do not have the education to back up your experience.

Granted there are excellent medics/emt's out there that have the minimal training and they do their jobs admirably don't get me wrong.

Drop down off your high horse and come back to earth.

We now know you are the best medic in the world because you work in Chicago in the Ghetto. Get out to a rural service, take care of a critical patient for 50 minutes to an hour and see if more education would have served you better.

by the way, when I and a new medic. I had a bachelors degree. We had a call where a school bus crashed. We had 24 children on the bus with minor to serious injury. The bus driver was critical. We had a total of 3 ambulances in our county. We also had minimal support from outlying counties. We triaged and transported all patients with the help of 3 helicopters, our 3 ambulances and 4 ambulances from the neighboring counties. Our last patient was transported from the scene 54 minutes after our arrival on scene. No one died, no one got worse and it worked out well. I guess that me having all that education should have caused the cluster you alluded to with triage but it didn't. hmmm your argument isn't so valid now.

[EmergencyMedicalTigger]

Holy crap, what happened to this thread? I don't look at it for a couple days and now people are deciding that education is a waste of time and not necessary? I agree that experience is invaluable, but obtaining a "piece of paper" means you can read, write, speak correctly, and think critically. It really ticks me off when people find out I have an education and they ask "Why would you want to be in EMS if you have a degree?" That is one of the biggest problems with this profession. We're seen as an emergency taxi service with education from some tech program at a community college (that's if you didn't take the "medic in 4 weeks course" by mail). You want respect from other healthcare professionals? Have some respect for yourself and colleagues and strive to be better! Ignorance breeds more ignorance.

I find this new breed of supposedly educated paramedics don't do well when you have large scale triaging or large crowds in the ghetto threatening to kill you.They turn and run or just freeze and can't think straightquote]

Guess where I work? They send people with pieces of paper into the ghetto too. I never go on scene until PD gets there and I certainly don't let the hoodlums crowd me when I'm with my pt.

This is really pathetic. *sigh* This thread is going to go down the toilet fast. :roll: Thank goodness I have to go to work in a little bit-off to see my homies in da ghetto.

Peace out yo'

AAS

BS-Sociolgy

BS-Psychology

MS-working on it

Paramedic-working on it

Edited for side note: The rest of my district is 30 miles of cows straight out to the county line. Just like Ruff said, see if you can hang in the back with a critical pt back through the 30 miles of fields and cows and the 4 miles of ghetto just to get to the hospital. You'll be lucky if you get a certified volunteer fire guy to ride that far in with you on a code-that is, if any show at all.

[Just Plain Ruff]

ok before we start down the path of rural versus urban my post was in no way to be construed that rural was better than urban.

Before anyone on this thread goes down that road

My intentions were not to start that debate but simply that if chicagomedic thinks that his ghetto homies(co-workers) can run a scene better than an educated person I challenge him to go to a rural area where the resources of the chicago pd, fd, od, ed, xd and all the resources of his area are not to be found. Have him run a couple of mass casualty incidents and critical patients where a hospital is not on every street corner(gross overgeneralization but you get the picture) and run these types of calls in a rural area. I'd like to see how he handles it.

[AZCEP]

I will agree that an experienced and educated provider is the ultimate goal. Unfortunately, the current system has left many with only a classroom education that is lacking in the ability to apply it in the street.

There was a time that a new EMT could not attend a paramedic program without some street experience. Then it became acceptable to allow EMT's that spent their time on interfacility transports to attend ALS level classes. Currently in many places EMT's can leave their BLS classes, walk into an ALS program while the ink is still wet and be admitted. This is a dismal system failure, not the fault of the individuals.

If we concede that an educated, and experienced provider is what we want, how would we go about creating them?

My suggestion is to build it into the degree program itself. If the candidate has an associates level degree prior to entering the ALS program, we would be able to use more of the time to provide more field/clinical experience. A four year degreed paramedic with more than a two full years of clinical, vehicular, advanced level didactic exposure would be an asset in a rural or urban environment.

[chicagoambo]

How much education is required to be a paramedic?Not a nurse,or doctor.A ambo grunt, i have to laugh at you supermedics who are impressed with your titles! Hey we're talking being a paramedic, next thing i'll here is lets do chest tubes in the field!

[chicagoambo]

Hey you rural guys are right, you got long transports!Why not have nursing part of your system criteria?