Current and Future State of EMS Education
Scott McConnell, MBA, BSN, RN, CEN, PHRN, NRP, EMS-I
Owner again DistanceCME, Nurse Educator, EMS Educator
First, I would like to say EMS Education is not broken! That is certainly a controversial statement to lead with, but I have always said EMS parallels the career trajectory of nursing and when you look at the infancy of nursing 1750 to 1893 what we had was a subservient apprenticeship with no didactic education. “Most American nurses received on-the-job training in hospital diploma schools. Nursing students were unpaid, giving hospitals a source of free labor. This created what many nurse historians and policy analysts see as a system that continues to undervalue nursing’s contribution to acute care.” (History Lesson: Nursing Education has evolved over the decades, 2012, para. 5).
In 1893, the Columbian Exposition met and although Ms. Nightingale was unavailable to attend she did have a paper presented at the exposition. In essence, the paper argued and proved that a well-educated nursing workforce with standards of practice were needed to improve the healthcare of the United States. Isn’t this where we are now? Young enough to have moved through our growing pains of the late 60’s and early 70s, but luckily enough to be in an age of extensive medical growth where all levels of providers are looking to grow the care we provide.
So where does this leave us? We can keep the status que or we can move along but hopefully at a much greater speed than our nursing brothers and sisters. We should move away from the Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and gravitate towards the Department of Health, stop thinking of ourselves as transport to the hospital but as bring the hospitals care to the sick and injured. “EMS is a critical component of the nation’s healthcare system. Indeed, regardless of where they live, work or travel, people across the United States rely on a sufficient, stable and well-trained workforce of EMS providers for help in everyday emergencies, large-scale incidents and natural disasters alike.” ("Education," 2015, para. 1)
Our education should reflect growth and evidence-based medicine should be the law of the land, if it is proven to be effective let’s adopt it, if not let’s stop teaching the worthless skills of yesterday as we have seen with the almost disappearance of the Long Spine Board. Let’s increase the minimum requirements to be every level of provider, let’s give Paramedics an Associates degree, a diagnosis’s language, and get away from certification and move towards licensure. Let us take the reins of our chosen career path and have better continuing education that although challenging is accessible and move away from the alphabet soup certifications. These are just my musings on the subject, I know there are places that are very progressive in this country and I know there are very protocol driven areas as well, but let’s stop the segregation and become a healthcare group with a purpose, where we act as a group not individuals and Treat our patients with the skill, compassion and talent I know is out there
References
Education. (2015). Retrieved from https://www.ems.gov/education.html
History Lesson: Nursing Education has evolved over the decades. (2012, November 12th, 2012). History Lesson: Nursing Education has evolved over the decades Blog post. Retrieved from https://www.nurse.com/blog/2012/11/12/history-lesson-nursing-education-has-evolved-over-the-decades-2
Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health
6 年Good read Scott. A great education is always beneficial to the person and the community her or she will serve when that education is able to be used/practiced in the care. As you described, there is definitely a need for change in the practice. Yet, there is also the preverbal elephant in the room, salary. Will an EMS provider ever recoup the cost so to say, of that college education? If so, how many years? Many EMS providers are on more than 1 payroll. If paramedics become licensed, does that mean the payer system will have to change and increase reimbursement and prehospital providers will see an increase in salary? I have read papers that suggest payers such as Medicare and Medicaid will not reimburse for costs of care not provided by those with Masters or Doctoral degrees. Professionals such as DNPs. One of the saddest things I hear in the prehospital industry are my colleagues not telling me about how they had a horrific pediatric trauma case, but they are using paramedicine as a stepping stone to something else. Thank you again for writing the paper!