Wednesday, May 23, 2007

First draft of EMS education standards released

The long-awaited first draft of the EMS education standards has been released. These standards--both the content and the format of the standards themselves--will have a profound influence on EMS and EMS education.

EMS Education Standards

There are several questions with links to submit comments online. I like that. Some of the questions and issues:

Can EMS education be competency-based (rather than based strictly on hours)?

Is an EMT class that is estimated to run 166 - 198 hours too much (as proposed it includes NIMS, CPR and HazMat orientation)?

Should EMTs have a greater knowledge of anatomy, physiology and pathophysiology in order to better understand assessment, disease processes and traumatic conditions?

Are the education standards and brief outline of content enough (as opposed to providing a detailed lesson plan)? Will publishers fill this in? (I believe we do that now anyway.)

And more...

Check it out. Offer comments.

More to follow on this important topic...

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