My experience with Unitek
I went to Unitek for my original certification - because I don't live and work in California, I had to recert in AZ six months after I completed the course. It is very expensive for an EMT-B course, but it should be noted that that cost includes hotel accommodations on site for 15 nights, three meals a day, transportation to field sites/the airport, the textbook, on online NREMT test prep program (JB learning, if I remember) and a voucher to take the NREMT. That, and the program has a ton of resources - lots of practice materials, a fully stocked ambulance and now, I guess, a helicopter. Also, CSU credit was offered to those who wanted it - though I won't need another college credit as long as I live so I didn't pay attention to this.
This set up, both in terms of the on site accommodations and the pacing, seemed geared towards a certain demographic for whom a semester long CC course might not be exactly easy - the students in the class were largely about-to-be-deployed military, several international defense contractors, law enforcement and firefighters who had already gained employ with a department somewhere (or had otherwise already been through an academy). Additionally, there were a few odd college students (all of whom were pre-med or pre-nursing) and then yes, a random couple of people for whom a CC course would have been a more obvious route. We also had one guy who had been working in EMS in Thailand for 12 years but had never received formal education in it and had flown back to the US solely for this purpose.
I can see why a lot of people would have major reservations about this type of a course - and with good reason. It's very little time to absorb a fair amount of new information. But the hours themselves are the same as a CC, as is the clinical/ride-along requirement - it's just packed into 12 hour days. If you're the type of person who learns quickly and thrives on intensive courses/academy style programs, it works well. If you're not, well, it was probably only a little bit better than useless.
I can't speak for the program in years passed, but I thoroughly enjoyed it when I went. It had a riveting and experienced lead instructor who managed to make several hours of lecture fascinating. He had a team of almost 30 odd other instructors who filtered in and out who helped with scenarios, taught skills, clarified some lecture material, helped us study, etc. There was a huge emphasis on live scenarios (to practice patient assessment) and hands on skills. Lecture topics from earlier in the day would often be translated into several live scenarios later in the day. You do begin to live it, because even when you're not in class every waking hour is filled studying or practicing skills/assessment outside the classroom with your classmates.
Trauma Sunday was 14 hours of live simulations which included things like several wrecked cars flipped over on their cabs lying in the street (so live traffic control was part of our education), with actors (mainly instructors and nursing students) in full gorey make up hanging upside down to seat belts and lying across hoods, etc. They simulated an MCI caused by a natural disaster at dusk (so finding victims became tricky). They simulated a violent scene and "killed" or "injured" the students who didn't clear their scene first or didn't keep monitoring scene safety during the exercise.
Honestly, I had a really good time and I learned a lot. I'm not going to claim that it was the best way of teaching the information for most people, or that it's even a really good way of teaching the information period, but most of my classmates seemed to do well. For the most part, they did well on their ride alongs (some of the bay area locals were even asked to come back and interview after they graduated), and many of the better students in the class have since found EMS related jobs or started medic school if they weren't already employed in their target job.
I do have my gripes with the program as well - while I had nothing but respect for most of my classmates and it did a pretty good job of weeding a few people out early in the program, it graduated a couple folks who I wouldn't trust with a house plant. It's possible that the instructors, in their experience, saw something I didn't. It's possible that the decision to not fail them was largely monetarily motivated. It could be that those couple of students would have been fine if they were in a slower paced, traditional CC course, or it could have been that it wouldn't have mattered what course they took because they were both dumber than bricks. Who knows.
Also, their career placement was completely useless for me and probably completely useless to anyone who wasn't a bay area local where they have all their connections. A number of the locals did end up getting jobs reasonably quickly and appear to have kept them. I had to get a job out here in AZ on my own.
I dunno, this post has gotten long. I could probably come up with more negative/shady things to note if I sat and reflected on it, but really on the whole my experience was very positive. Again, not defending it as a particularly good model for most students, but for some it does seem to work well.
