Future of Ems

EMSP 3001

Week 11

     The history of EMS is not a very long one.  In the 40 plus years since the creation of the show “Emergency”, EMS has been drastically improving.  This does not mean that EMS is where it needs to be.  Much like other aspects of medicine, there is always room for improvement.  Whether or not EMS continues to excel is dependent entirely on how hard the current members of the institution fight for its advancement.

     It is quite easy to stay complacent and just “go with the flow”.  There are some people who feel that EMS is exactly where it should be, and that there really isn’t a need for much improvement.  That is exactly what we don’t need if we want EMS to continue to improve.  The first and most important part of EMS that is important for the future is the quality of training.  I feel that this is where the future truly lies.  Without exceptional training and education, EMS will continue to be looked at as irrelevant to the other sections of healthcare.  With proper training comes competent employees.  With competent employees comes confidence in their abilities.  If other sections see that EMS employees are excellent healthcare providers, then they will be more likely to take EMS personnel serious.

     In order for EMS personnel to become better trained, they need to be afforded the opportunities that other healthcare providers get.  When you work in a hospital for example, you have mandatory and sometimes non mandatory training sessions.  In these sessions, a subject matter expert on a certain treatment or specialty gives a training or lecture.  These usually involve an enormous amount of information that supply the attendees with very important knowledge that they are usually not taught in a “school setting”.  Very rarely are EMS personnel afforded the same opportunities.  Another example of ways to improve competence would be to have mandatory days where EMS personnel have to validate their skills.  In the military, every Thursday we have either a lecture or a hands on training.  Then, once every six months we have to validate on trauma lanes.  This makes sure we stay proficient on skills.  If the civilian world did this, I feel it would help keep EMS personnel proficient.  This is very helpful with things like intubation.  Also, I feel that in the future, civilian and military EMS will work together so that everyone receives the same training as well as funding.