Over the past few years, we’ve heard a ton about childhood obesity. Heck, the current First Lady has made it her crusade. Objectively, we all know that the RIGHT thing to do is feed our children a healthy, balanced diet without junk food. But have you tried doing it? Heck, have you even tried doing it yourself? (To throw my political gauntlet down at the so-called Food Police of the Nanny State, you can take my Coca-Cola Super Big Gulp from my cold dead hands!) At some point, many of us give up and say it’s better for the kid to get some nutritional value and caloric intake from junk food than it is for the kid to starve from not eating the healthy things.
So, you ask me what this has to do with EMS? It’s elementary, my dear Watson. EMS educators, EMS administrators, and EMS conference staff face the same challenge. What do medics need to know? What skills and knowledge are they lacking in? But what are these medics willing to pay for and/or sit through?
You see this when you look at the EMS conference agendas. For the vast majority of these conferences, the attendees are going on their own dime. Therefore, to a great extent, the free market rules. Granted, states and the National Registry do mandate that certain topics be covered, but even with that, there’s a lot of wiggle room, although some EMS systems do require that their providers maintain certain “card courses.” Card courses are a whole different rant, though. (To me, continuing education means that you’re acquiring new knowledge, not just repeating the same lectures and skills on a 2-4 year rotating basis.)
So, while you see comments abound about how EMS needs to improve or learn more in certain areas, you don’t necessarily see the EMS conference world striving to embrace these concepts. Practice on high quality CPR? Rarely seen, except in the exhibit hall at a vendor display in the context of selling some device that’s alleged to provide CPR feedback. Discussion of treating respiratory emergencies? Not so much. Photos of nasty car wrecks? Yeah. Plenty of those. Tear-jerking, maudlin stories about how EMS is special? Yeah. We’ve got those at the conference.
So, here’s the challenge for us as EMS advocates and EMS educators. We’ve got to find a way to make the critical knowledge palatable for the masses. We’ve got to make it relevant. Otherwise, we remain where we are; where continuing education is little more than repeating the same materials ad nauseam. And we wonder why there’s people falsifying CE attendance? I cannot condone academic dishonesty, but it’s little wonder it occurs when the culture of continuing education is to provide the same knowledge over and over again on a two or four year basis rather than to provide new education continually.
Oh, and by the way, Happy EMS Week.
To a certain extent, it is good to REVIEW certain topics with some sort of frequency (some every few years, some yearly) due to rarity of a condition and/or emergence of new evidence. For example, one should probably be yearly is identification of pediatric life-threats and pediatric resuscitation (even emergency physicians should be reviewing this yearly). Acquiring new knowledge is a must, but you cannot neglect that which you have been taught but haven’t put to use. Low frequency procedures (e.g. intubation, cricothyrotomy, chest decompression, etc.) should absolutely should be reviewed yearly. Be that a it may, I do believe that many of the card courses are over emphasized (e.g. BLS and ACLS) if the paramedic is seeing enough of certain emergencies.
Not an argument there. We ALL need to be reviewing certain high-risk, low-frequency skills. I just find that there’s a ton of emphasis in continuing education on rehashing the same knowledge cycle after cycle as well as a lack of emphasis on teaching the new science.
What about the myriad of pediatric “merit badge”(stealing from Dr. Bledsoe there) courses out there? Aren’t they just as bad at regurgitating the same stuff? I mean come on, the absent medical directors/managers require these courses, but often do them in house. And as such, they know it’s a requirement to have the card in the wallet of each and every medic, so they make it so simple a kindergartener could pass.
I mean, what’s the point, I’ve been to classes where you actually sit and take the written “test” as a group to make sure people pass. They often wonder why my scores are different than the rest of the “class” I’d rather come in and sit for 4 hours under a pediatric ER attending or Intensivist. Cover the things we need to and not in some
crappyneat, tidy prepackaged processed version, but in a more socratic dialogue type learning environment. Be okay with people not knowing the answers, even if that is heresy. Rant done.Toasted — pediatric education is a joke. At least in my neck of the woods, the pediatric emergency medicine community treats us as if only they are capable of handling a peds emergency. Yet, the core message of any pediatric training they provide is….. wait for it….. bring all peds to us because we’re the experts.
Wes, you know I am always available to speak at conferences for expenses and a small honorarium. Don’t make the problems harder than they are… 🙂