@ OP,
I've seen this line of thinking numerous times from EMT's and EMT-I's. They think that they've seen the medics do certain things for certain pt presentations over time. After a while, The EMT thinks that they could pretty much do what the medics do, that it's mostly "see A, do B, expect C" as was mentioned earlier.
The paramedic's education goes much deeper than "CPAP pushes lung water," "Amiodarone stops irregular heartbeats," "Albuterol helps wheezes," etc. When we use guidelines for treating crush syndrome, we need to know on a molecular level when, why, and how much bicarb, D50, NS, and albuterol to give, and for how long.
I had pharm for EMS and A&P for EMS in my medic original program, and I've also taken college human bio and pharm, and there's certainly a difference. There are maybe 30 or so EMS meds, but there are many more in IFT. The medical education a degree provides including with gen-eds such as College Writing, ITE (basic computer class), a foreign language are very useful in real life and the field.
We need to have at least the basics of a formal medical education to have the foundation with which we can improve our medical education as best practices and evidence based research increase our scope and capabilities. A ghetto, watered down medic mill "pharmacology for EMS" and "A&P for EMS" is lacking so much that it's difficult to impossible to fully understand the advances in emergency medicine as new thought processes, skills and abilities become available to us.
I've seen this line of thinking numerous times from EMT's and EMT-I's. They think that they've seen the medics do certain things for certain pt presentations over time. After a while, The EMT thinks that they could pretty much do what the medics do, that it's mostly "see A, do B, expect C" as was mentioned earlier.
The paramedic's education goes much deeper than "CPAP pushes lung water," "Amiodarone stops irregular heartbeats," "Albuterol helps wheezes," etc. When we use guidelines for treating crush syndrome, we need to know on a molecular level when, why, and how much bicarb, D50, NS, and albuterol to give, and for how long.
I had pharm for EMS and A&P for EMS in my medic original program, and I've also taken college human bio and pharm, and there's certainly a difference. There are maybe 30 or so EMS meds, but there are many more in IFT. The medical education a degree provides including with gen-eds such as College Writing, ITE (basic computer class), a foreign language are very useful in real life and the field.
We need to have at least the basics of a formal medical education to have the foundation with which we can improve our medical education as best practices and evidence based research increase our scope and capabilities. A ghetto, watered down medic mill "pharmacology for EMS" and "A&P for EMS" is lacking so much that it's difficult to impossible to fully understand the advances in emergency medicine as new thought processes, skills and abilities become available to us.
