some questions are what things might take the place of an EMT in the future?
Using the "EMT" to include paramedics (names is a huge hornet's nest), then no. At the highest level, the EMT-Paramedic (which is dropping the "EMT" designation under the new education standards) represents a medical provider who has specialized medical training to provide care to patients outside of the hospital and initiate a continuum of care that ends inside the hospital, normally at the emergency room, but increasingly including specialized services such as neurosurgery, trauma surgery, or cardiac surgery.
While the concept of a specialized prehospital medical provider is going to stay constant and will most likely not be absorbed into another health care field such as nursing, the name of that provider may change, and the philosophy underlying how that provider does his/her job will constantly be changing. When the concept of a formal system of training and provision of prehospital medical care first came about, the idea was that the provider would provide an assessment, call a doctor over a radio to tell the doctor the findings and the doctor would in turn provide treatment orders to the paramedic. Now most areas have moved to, or moving towards, the paramedic making the treatment decisions on his/her own utilizing guidelines provided by the emergency medical service's medical director instead of direct orders over the radio. However, most systems still require high risk/low utilization treatments to be ran by a doctor over the radio first.
Similarly, as with all of medicine, the treatments provided are always going to change. Some treatments will fall out of favor as more research is done. Other treatments will be introduced as we understand more about how the body works and as technology increases. Some of the things done today will look barbaric in 30 years just as some of the things done 30 years ago look barbaric today.
and what could possibly improve the EMT job in the future?
Better funding to ensure proper equipment and job stability. Right now the major insurance payor (Medicare) pays what it wants, not what it costs to provide care. Similarly, a lot of services rely on little to no tax payments which limits the amount of care provided, especially when it comes to employing special teams or disaster preparedness.
Better technology. There's two ways that technology will improve the future of prehosptial care. Operations level technology (how we go about doing our job in contrast to what medical care we provide) allows for better CQ/CI and documentation with electronic record keeping. As wireless networks increase, there could come a day when prehospital providers could tap into electronic medical records in the field, which would help immensely when patients are unable to provide their medical history. Similarly, better technology when it comes to lifting and moving patients can save backs, careers, money, and lives. For example, it's standard in some countries for ambulances to have gurney lifts instead of paramedics lifting gurneys into ambulances.
Better medical technology (what we do in contrast to how we do it) will help to provide more accurate assessments and move more emergency care from the hospital to the field where patients can be treated quicker than if they had to wait to reach the hospital first. Similarly, better assessment technology can give the hospital earlier warning if specialty services are needed.
thanks
