Bread And Butter

Today’s blog post (and sorry for the delay to my Mom and the two others who read the blog) was going to be about continuing education.  I was going to write about the seeming inability to get the majority of EMS providers to engage in continuing education above and beyond the usual “required” card courses and/or the state-mandated refresher course material.  (Parenthetical.  I’m very glad to practice prehospital medicine in the Lone Star State where the state mandates very little as far as specific content and leaves it up to the provider as to what continuing education to seek out, subject to a few broad categories.)

I was going to complain about people not attending high quality continuing education, even when it’s offered for free.  I was going to mention the challenge of bringing the knowledge from international and national conferences like SMACC and EMSWorldExpo back to one’s home EMS system.  I was going to mention what I call the “Goldilocks” challenge of EMS continuing education — ensuring that the material isn’t so introductory to be a rehash of EMT classes but isn’t so complex as to require a PhD in pharmacology and physiology to understand the material, let alone apply it. I could even mention the whole volunteer versus paid debate, not even mentioning how so many volunteers manage to attend outside continuing education and conferences on their own dime, but you’ll rarely see a large EMS system (let alone a fire-based EMS system) sending people to a conference, let alone their members attending on their own. (See also: If I need to know it, they’ll do it in-house and pay me overtime for it.)

These are all worth mentioning.  And they deserve mentioning.  But here’s what really struck me. We can have all of the high-speed providers going to courses like these.  And there’s also going to be a lot of people going to “cool” sounding continuing education courses in tactical medicine, hazmat, or some sort of technical rescue. (Please, please tell me why an EMT working interfacility transfers needs to know how to be an “operator” in the hot zone.) But we rarely have good, consistent, clinically current, relevant continuing education on the topics that are the bread and butter of prehospital medicine. Think about your last shift on the ambulance.  Chest pain, respiratory difficulty, sepsis, ground level falls, abdominal pain, routine MVCs.  How much continuing education have you received on these matters? If you did receive continuing education on these topics, was it merely a repeat of what you’ve been told every recertification cycle you’ve been in EMS? From the amount of providers who think that any heart rate above 120 must be some form of arrhythmia that requires treatment and who think that EMS administration of diuretics for CHF patients is a good idea, clearly, we’re not getting the bread and butter of EMS down, much less mastering it.

What we see with continuing education is but a symptom of what’s wrong with EMS.  We want to do all the new cool things of the moment, whether it’s community paramedicine, technical rescue, tactical medicine, or critical care medicine.  We don’t want to do the bread and butter of medicine (see also: every EMS social media forum complaining about system abuse, drug abusers, or “frequent flyers”) and when we do the bread and butter, we aren’t always current.  If we can’t get the routine right, why should we be trusted with thinking outside the box?

Comments

  1. Maybe there is a mindset of not needing to expand knowledge in the bread and butter areas because we do handle those patient encounters with higher frequency. Perhaps we as an industry confuse that frequency with competence and expertise. Community Paramedicine is not much more than increased understanding, recognition, and expertise in managing the medical side of those bread and butter calls, and doing so on a long-term basis. There is little glory and adrenaline to be found in it too. It takes patience, compassion, and a desire to learn our bread and butter work more in-depth than the typical EMS provider is armed with. Maybe we should all strive to be Community Paramedics.

  2. Bravo Wes!

  3. Lori Gallian says

    Really really well said.