The New York State NREMT Experience

For those who are unaware, I recently moved to Denver, Colorado from upstate New York. In New York I worked as an EMT and planned to do the same once arriving in Colorado. Sounds easy right? Almost like an EMT license should be, at least somewhat, transferable from state to state? Well, turns out that is most definitely not the case.

Now in most states, EMT's are certified through the national registry of EMT's, or the NREMT. Once certified, EMT's can apply for licensing through whichever state they wish to practice in. This idea makes sense and allows for multi-state EMT-ing with minimal hassel. This also allows for a standard of education which Nationally registered EMT's are expected too meet.

This is where New York State and my journey come into play. See, New York State decided it wanted to be special. New York decided it would have it's own EMT course that is totally separate from the NREMT. This means that obtaining a NYS EMT certification does not necessarily mean you will be obtaining your national cert as well. Unfortunately this is the situation I found myself in before moving to Colorado.

I thought obtaining my NREMT cert would be easy and painless. I was mostly wrong. I had just re-certified my EMT in NYS, I thought I would be able to transfer CE hours. Again, I was mostly wrong. As luck would have it, about half of my CE hours were non-transferable to the NREMT. This meant I would have to pay for even more CE courses and spend more time in Zoom classes. This wasn't a huge deal, but was for sure annoying. Not to mention that calling the National Registry proved to be an incredibly frustrating process. It seemed every time I contacted a customer support agent that I would receive different answers regarding my re-certification. Sometimes my CE hours counted towards the NREMT, sometimes they did not.

Finally, after a few months of Zoom, I was able to take the NREMT "written" exam. This part of the process was actually incredibly simple. I received my permission to test from the NREMT in about a day, and then schedule my exam for a week out. The exam process was also super simple, I was able to take it online using a webcam proctor software.

I have to hand it to the NREMT and State of Colorado Bureau of Emergency Services. My NREMT certification was sent to me one day after taking the exam, and my Colorado card took one day as well. Honestly, once everything was in place to test, the process was super simple.

So, while I am a bit salty after dealing with NREMT support, I am super appreciative of how quickly they graded my exam and sent my paperwork through. Ultimately, I think the NREMT model makes the most sense and makes having an EMT card in multiple states very easy.