I just want to talk about that for a second. I'm a product of a 6-week course that met MWF 9-3. My class was relatively challenging, with a quiz every class day and militaristic instructors. Everyone needed to know their stuff every day of class or they would get screwed with constantly. I left that class with a very good understanding of the material I was supposed to learn, and ~60% of the class passed with over an 80%. Our school was known to have respectable ride alongs at the local 911 companies, especially compared to some of the community college guys.
A lot of my friends are products of the drawn out 3 month community college courses. They told me that the gap between their classes was too long, and it made them hard to connect what they learned 2 months prior to what they were learning that day. They told me that a majority of their classmates were taking the class for BS reasons, and that there was like a 50% pass rate.
I'm not saying that those of you who took it at community college courses are worse EMTs or anything (some of the best EMTs I know took their courses at the local CC), I'm just saying you shouldn't be too quick to dismiss the "accelerated courses" just because they finish in half the time. The hours are all there and accounted for, and you learn the same material. The people that join the accelerated course because they're trying to take "the easy way out" get weeded out the first week, and the drop out rate is something like 25%. The ones who stick with it all the way until the end usually pass the skills and written exams with flying colors.
While I will not dispute this fact in your case, my experience is the exact opposite.
I worked with several EMTs that were products of that accelerated thinking. They went to a school that did a M-F, 8 hour a day, 3 week course, that slammed the information into them and was more interested in getting the money from the students, pushing them through, and moving on to the next group they could take money from. Fail rate was around 80%. Those that passed were amont the worst EMTs I have ever worked with. They didn't retain anything and information that I believed to be VERY basic was way over their head. Their excuse? "All EMT class is meant to do is allow you to pass a test so that you can go get a job and then learn what you need to know." That is the biggest BS in the world. If you need to know it to function in the real world, then it should be taught to you in class.
My class lasted an entire semester and was 203 hours in length. Plus, because my school wanted to produce good EMTs that would hack it in the real world, an additional 3 semesters of classes were recommended, including Basic Cardiology, A&P, conversational spanish, pre-paramedic training, etc... By midterm, the school had a 33% drop out rate, because the instuctors wanted to teach and make sure they only produced the best. But, if you passed the midterm, the instructors garunteed that you would pass the class final (never had someone fail). If you passed the class you had a 99% of passing the certifying test (only had 1 person fail in 10 years teaching).
Now, that is not a knock on EMTs that went through accelerated courses, but in my experience, they did not seem to produce many quality EMTs...
ANYONE interested in becoming an EMT can pass the class and certifing testing if they really want to, whether it be through a 3 week class or a 6 month class... But I am more concerned with the quality that make it into the real world. But, as I said... that is just my experience...
