Online Paramedic Program

medicRob

Forum Deputy Chief
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For Medic Rob who has no experience in online education I would invite you to attend one of our sessions online. Having a closed mind to today's technology is probably due to lack of knowledge. I agree with him that skills cannot be taught online, although we do have videos for students to review before they come for their skills training at our facility.

Who said I have no experience in online courses? I completed plenty of courses utilizing an online system called RODP (Regents online degree program http://rodp.org) through the University I was with, I even teach a course through this system with the same University. However, these courses were general ed courses like "English Composition I", "General Psychology I", etc on top of my campus course load and they were not biology courses or courses with a clinical or a lab component, although I feel that lab component courses like A & P can be taught online IF a student has the drive and the motivation to achieve such a thing, as a matter of fact I am a teaching assistant for Anatomy & Physiology I and II, and one of my responsibilities is maintaining one of the online Anatomy & Physiology II courses for the University.

It is not that I do not believe online education is ineffective, it is that I don't believe that a student can possibly grasp the knowledge necessary to become a competent paramedic utilizing an online program without on-site labs and one on one instructor feedback.

However, I will take you up on your offer to attend an online session (Please feel free to forward links and details to my inbox). Moreover, I will attend them with an open mind.
 

medic417

The Truth Provider
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Hello Everyone,

My name is Brad Newbury and I am the Program Director for NMETC's Online Paramedic program. I have over 15 years of EMS education and worked tirelessly to make sure that our program was not like the other "online programs" I looked at others and wanted to make sure that our program was something altogether different than just reading ppt and taking exams.

Welcome to the site Brad. Thanks for coming here and responding to the critics. The explanation of your programs methods intrigues me, I will have to check them out so I can see if I should start suggesting it as well. I am glad to hear that the students leave with college credits something that has lacked even with the more established programs.
 

EMS49393

Forum Captain
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I take a lot of online classes, so I completely understand how attractive they appear. I can easily complete 18 or more credit hours a semester because I attend my classes online. Honestly, I really do not need three lecture hours a week on sociology, advanced composition, or any of my math courses. Also, my current degree track is not in science making many of my courses easily adaptable to the online forum.

That said, I do not agree that all classes should be online. My paramedic course included A&P I and II online with a regular lab. I had close to 1000 hours of clinical rotations in my program. As much as attending all those clinicals seemed like a pain in the butt, looking back, they all taught me something, and if given the chance to attend my program again or take a shortcut class, I'd take mine, over and over.

I do not have a problem with online didactic, especially if it is interactive and live. I do have a problem with not including any real clinical time.

Ninety hours of clinical time versus 1000 hours of clinical time? I think our patients deserve just a little more practice then 90 whole hours. Hell, they deserve more than 1000 hours.
 

Medic2409

Forum Lieutenant
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<snip>

We are an extension program of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio in Massachusetts. All of our paramedic students are UT students as well and at the completion of the program students are awarded 33 college credits from the University.

<snip>

I'm planning on taking my BS through UT San Antonio, fwiw. I'm pretty impressed that the school has a branch up in Massachusetts. One question I have, do the Mass. students have to pay OOS Tuition?
 

NMETC

Forum Ride Along
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Clinicals

Ninety hours of clinical time versus 1000 hours of clinical time? I think our patients deserve just a little more practice then 90 whole hours. Hell, they deserve more than 1000 hours.[/QUOTE]

Wow 1000 Clinical hours? Which program did you go to? I have never heard of a paramedic program with 1000 clinical hours, that is impressive. I think you would be VERY hard pressed to match that. Even the Danial Freeman program at UCLA only does 172 in hospital and 480 field internship hours and is just over 1200hrs total.

The practical skills training, not clinical hours is done at our school over a 10 day period. We use small group learning and a military model for skills training. We have found that using this method gains skill mastery in a shorter period of time than our on campus program. I believe there are several factors that are involved in why our online students do better than the on campus students.

Our students complete 500 hours of Hospital and Field internship (250 hrs in each). There are skills benchmarks and patient contacts that must be completed during those internships hours as well. Our total program hours is over 1100 hours.
 

NMETC

Forum Ride Along
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Tuition

I'm planning on taking my BS through UT San Antonio, fwiw. I'm pretty impressed that the school has a branch up in Massachusetts. One question I have, do the Mass. students have to pay OOS Tuition?

The credits are award as part of the overall tuition at our school. So it is different than what Texas students pay. It is complicated because the State of Texas offsets the local students tuition for paramedic school.

But if students want to continue and receive there BS in Emergency Health Science they do pay a different rate than non residents.
 
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