Experience?

Sasha

Sasha

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So we don't hijack the other thread...

Straight into medic? Why or why not? And don't use "My instructor said" or "Because the streets is where you really learn!"

EMS wants to be taken seriously as a profession.

Consider this. No profession that's taken seriously plays this "step up" game.

RNs don't have to be LPNs first.

MDs don't have to be PAs first.

Lawyers don't have to be Legal Assistances first.

Cops don't have to be Security Guards first.
 
Because we always done it that way!:P


You already know my answer!
 
Now, why did you have to go and specify every single argument I would want to use and make it off limits? How am I ever going to think of a legitimate reason why you would have to have experience prior to medic school? I know! Because my class required it! How's that? Is that one still fair game?

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Tradition does not always have to be bad. Besides, there is another medical professional that in most cases, requires one or two years as a lower certification. PA school.
 
That is rapidly changing about PA school. However, PA was specifically set up as a means of transitioning other healthcare professionals into a mid-level provider, for the sole purpose of meeting a specific need. EMS was never intended for that purpose, so it's not a directly applicable analogy.
 
daedalus said:
Tradition does not always have to be bad. Besides, there is another medical professional that in most cases, requires one or two years as a lower certification. PA school.
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Not all PA schools require a lower certification or license. Some state you can get a CNA or EMT-B cert quickly to pick up extra money while in school if you need to work. They don't require you to be an RN or RRT to into school. If they did, they may not have many students to select from. RNs usually go to NP school and Paramedics often don't have the education requirements as the other professions may already have with their degree. The other allied health professions have already advanced to doctorate levels.
 
Sasha said:
So we don't hijack the other thread...

Cops don't have to be Security Guards first.
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I know quite a few LEO's who were security guards. Because the age to become a member of the RCMP our police force is 19. You only need to be 18 to become a security guard. Some licensing authorities require it that way. The Alberta College of Paramedics requires you to be a EMT before you make EMT Paramedic. To be a EMT you need to be a EMR (equivalent to EMT-Basic) . EMR is the only designation that ACoP doesn't require a previous designation. I'm curious any other jurisdictions require that as well. While working ground support for an air medivac I asked him what he thought about the ACoP system. He said he like the ACoP system because one would not have to put down a whole lot of money and time only to find out they hated it and realizing that they wasted the time and money.
 
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fortsmithman said:
I know quite a few LEO's who were security guards. Because the age to become a member of the RCMP our police force is 19. You only need to be 18 to become a security guard. Some licensing authorities require it that way. The Alberta College of Paramedics requires you to be a EMT before you make EMT Paramedic. To be a EMT you need to be a EMR (equivalent to EMT-Basic) . EMR is the only designation that ACoP doesn't require a previous designation. I'm curious any other jurisdictions require that as well. While working ground support for an air medivac I asked him what he thought about the ACoP system. He said he like the ACoP system because one would not have to put down a whole lot of money and time only to find out they hated it and realizing that they wasted the time and money.
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But it is not a requirement to be a security guard first.

And you should find out if you hated it in EMT school, that's what ride times are for! So you get your "real life" experience and find out if EMS is REALLY right for you. So if you did your clinicals, why would you need a year or more of road time before going to Paramedic? If you didn't do clinicals, why a YEAR? Shouldn't a month be sufficent for you to figure out "Hey! I like this!" or "No, maybe I should go to barber school.."
 
VentMedic said:
Not all PA schools require a lower certification or license. Some state you can get a CNA or EMT-B cert quickly to pick up extra money while in school if you need to work. They don't require you to be an RN or RRT to into school. If they did, they may not have many students to select from. RNs usually go to NP school and Paramedics often don't have the education requirements as the other professions may already have with their degree. The other allied health professions have already advanced to doctorate levels.
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I have a lot of PA friends, and the fact that some schools are not requiring prior experience is much to their resentment. Remember, PA school does not require a residency, so it is only two years of formal medical education. The history of PAs in the US was a transition of Navy Corpsman into medical practitioners as a way to fill the growing need for Primary care providers.
 
PA school might not require a residency, but there are still rotations and PAs don't carry an unrestricted medical license. Plus residency is an option for specilization.
 
daedalus said:
I have a lot of PA friends, and the fact that some schools are not requiring prior experience is much to their resentment.
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Bingo! You have just hit on the very reason that all this "you need EMT experience!" nonsense persists. Because all those who had to get it resent anyone that didn't have to jump through the same silly, pointless hoops they had to jump through. Just like Sasha said we don't want to hear, "we've always done it this way!"

Tradition: Holding EMS back since 1972.
 
how much time do you actually spend doing clinicals during EMT class??? You may be able to find out if you enjoy it or not but you don't gather nearly enough experience to prepare yourself. Again, this is just my opinion (and I won't use "my instructor" said this time) but you have to be a good EMT to be a good medic. I'm sure everyone here that has gone on to paramedic school learned that its always BLS before ALS. In order to learn how to properly apply the skills learned in EMT school, you have to practice in the field. I can gaurantee that no one here experienced the wide variety of patients in the 16hrs of clinical time they had for EMT. If you dealt with Peds, teens, adults, geriatrics, bariatrics, 5150s, and chronically ill pts during your EMT time then please, speak up. Dealing with each of these types of pts is much harder than dealing with a student acting like he fell off a ladder or has chest pain or difficulty breathing. Field experience as an EMT will allow you to encounter and treat most, if not all of these patients before actually going to medic school. Learning how to properly write a PCR as an EMT is also a good thing. At least if you know how to properly document a call, you won't have to figure it out after running your first code...remembering all that crap is hard enough as it is! lol;)

If you make it through paramedic school without having dealt with a real patient then you will definately be somewhat lost by the time you make it to your internship. Believe me, once you're actually doing your field internship as a paramedic, you'll find out how much different it actually is then when you were in class practicing on your buddies. I don't know anyone that has said any differently either. Again, this is just my personal opinion and I don't fault anyone for doing it one way or the other.
 
People differ.

I've seen great paramedics who came straight from training, I've seen EMT's who did fine in class but were not OK in the field, but these were differentiated more by temperment than knowledge.

Sort of like combat. Unless you weed out strenuously, and even after you try, you will find that initially most people in combat have a strong tendency to curl up and not fight back due to the inability to "do something!" because of the usual confusion of emergencies, or are just too scared.

Whichever way, some folks will pan out and some won't, despite their grades and/or absence of street exposure before starting.
 
JROD said:
...I don't fault anyone for doing it one way or the other.
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I do. That's why students with no experience get admission preference over those with experience when i am on the admission committee. I have no desire to spend valuable education time trying to break their bad habits and disrupt everyone else's educational experience while I argue with them because they think they know it all. I don't have that problem with blank slates.
 
Believe me, once you're actually doing your field internship as a paramedic, you'll find out how much different it actually is then when you were in class practicing on your buddies.
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I've done my field internship. I understand that patients are different than a health classmate simulating an illness in a controlled enviorment.

However, instead of making experience as an EMT the requirement, why not expand the education and clinical ride time requirement?

No, I didn't run into every kind of patient, but I'm done with medic, I've worked as an EMT and I still haven't met every kind of patient out there. Have you?
 
I like to think that I've seen the majority of the different types of patients. Obviously there is a big grey area when it comes to practicing in the field and no one has really ever seen it all. I think that it would be a good idea to extend field time for EMTs. As far as dealing with students who think they know it all and having to break bad habits, sounds like you just continually get a bad batch of students. If you could also just give me an idea of the bad habits that these EMTs develop before medic school, that might also help me see your point a little better.

You're always talking about these EMT factories pumping out these bad EMTs. So does a bad EMT with no prior experience get admission priority over a good EMT from a good school who has spent a year in the field? That doesn't seem very open minded...
 
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Why not have a fresh medic, with an education, learning for their first year on the street. Instead of having a first aider learning for a year on the street? To me that was a wasted year for the EMT.

Ems will progress when they do away with EMT as a prerequist for paramedic! Your prerequists should be science classes, then 2 years of medic school. Major clinical time, with real preceptors, is better then working on the streets.
 
I guess I'm just gonna have to agree to disagree with pretty much everyone on this topic. Seems like I'm the only person that thinks the street is just as valuable as the classroom, but thats ok.

As far as doing away with EMT as a pre req...that might not be a bad idea as long as the program was at least two years. EMT is a prereq now so that the paramedic instructors don't have to teach these students how to take a B/P or how to use a KED (at least they aren't suppose to have to teach them how to). If you start a paramedic program without that basic knowledge then its gonna take way more than a year to get through.
 
In Alberta there is a paramedic program you can attend without any prior experience. It's a 4 year bachelor degree program. It's a zero to hero program at Medicine Hat College in Medicine Hat Alberta. It's the only program where ACoP will allow people to take the Emergency Medical Technologist - Paramedic Licensing exams without any prior EMS designation.
 
I tried to do it without experience, but since I got an IFT job while I was finishing my pre-reqs, I wound up with almost a year of field experience. And people are right, in some ways it was a hinderance, because I had to unlearn bad habits
 
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