Thoughts on EMS education
My Thoughts on EMS education
EMS education in the United States is broken, a mess even. I still cannot understand how different various EMS curriculums are from state to state or even community college to community college. Not only does it matter where you obtained your certification, but also who your instructor was. We all know “that guy” who works in EMS education. This guy seems to have a war story for every human event imaginable. Ask to go to the bathroom class? This dude has a war story. Need to leave early from class? This guy can tell you about the time he left early from somewhere and worked a triple cardiac arrest by himself. In my opinion, the worst part about this guy is that they’re a remarkable clinician. In the field they can take every call imaginable. They understand medicine incredibly well and can really “get after it.” Unfortunately, they cannot teach to save a damn. In order to compensate, they provide war stories, and hope that these war stories can get the information across. This is not to say that I am anti war story in a class room environment. War stories can provide valuable information and an alternative way to teach information. However, they cannot teach all of that information.
The discrepancies in EMS education extend further than “that guy.” Students are going through class and being set up for failure once it’s exam time. One practice that really ruffles my feathers is giving students the practical exam points card right after they learn the primary assessment. The only thing this does to students is freak them out, after all, the practical examination score card is overwhelming to a new student. Instead of worrying about obtaining imaginary points, students should be worrying about the “why” of the assessments themselves. While it is true that not assessing C-spine will result in loss of a point, the real world implications are far more grave.
I remain hopeful that EMS education will improve as time goes on. Historically, we have definitely seen an improvement in the type of provider who graduates from EMT or Medic class. I believe we can see an even more dramatic improvement if we seriously considered the standardification of EMS education. This includes both the information being taught but also the way in which it is being explained and taught to students. What I mean by this, is educators need to bring evidence based medicine into the class room. No longer should the maxim “The book tells you to do it this way but really this is how you do it” exist. Evidence based curriculums are the only way EMS will improve both clinically and culturally.
These are some of my thoughts on the state of EMS education in the U.S. Sure, I have more thoughts, but I figured this rambling of a post is long enough for the moment.