There are a lot of phrases that encapsulate the “meets minimum standards” mentality that continues to hold back EMS. However, one phrase continues to exemplify why EMS is relegated to being considered “unlicensed assistive staff.”
That phrase is : “Don’t need to know it.” This phrase captures the anti-intellectual bias that exists in EMS. (For example, “You don’t need book learning, let me teach you how we do it on the streets.”) This phrases captures the blind faith in dogma, whether spread by their instructors, their colleagues, the National Registry, or what someone who thinks they heard about a legal case from two states over…
As we engage in fitful efforts to embrace mobile healthcare, particularly in dealing with long term chronic care patients, we’re going to find that our education is massively lacking in virtually any topic other than those topics tailored for a select few acute/critically ill and patients. Paramedics have less clock hours in the classroom than most beauticians. EMT programs are usually less than a quarter of the length of paramedic programs.
If anything, EMS should be pounding on the doors of educators asking for MORE knowledge and becoming life-long learners. But instead, the sheep of EMS continue to bleat “Don’t need to know it.”
And now you know my skepticism when people claim that a new, improved EMS paradigm is just around the corner. But I’m enough of an idealistic to keep tilting at that windmill.
