EMS EDUCATION STANDARDS – A NEW EDITION IS ON THE HORIZON from EMS.gov

An ongoing initiative to revise the National EMS Education Standards will align them with the recently completed revision of the National EMS Scope of Practice Model

The National EMS Education Standards have helped educators, certifying bodies and regulators ensure that EMS providers receive an education that prepares them to perform their roles to the very best of their abilities.

Now a full decade old since their release in 2009, the current education standards require an update to ensure that the education of new EMS clinicians is in line with current medical practice and science as well as the recently released 2019 National EMS Scope of Practice Model.

“Ensuring EMS education programs prepare the workforce to best serve their patients and communities is a priority of NHTSA and our federal partners, as well as EMS leaders across the nation,” said Jon Krohmer, MD, director of the NHTSA Office of EMS. “Revising the National EMS Education Standards to align with the new Scope of Practice Model aligns with the original EMS Agenda for the Future and will help move EMS forward toward the vision described in EMS Agenda 2050.”

The National Association of EMS Educators (NAEMSE) is leading the revision of the standards and has put in place a development team with several experienced EMS educators. Funding for this effort is provided by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) Office of EMS and the Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau’s EMS for Children (EMSC) Program.

This group of EMS education experts, led by co-chairs Paul Rosenberger and Bill Young, is convening to write the new standards, with multiple opportunities for collaboration and input from both the national EMS community and the public. Three drafts will be released for public comment throughout the course of the project, which also aims to update the EMS Instructional Guidelines for all four levels of EMS certification (EMR, EMT, AEMT and paramedic). All members of the EMS community and any other members of the public are encouraged to provide feedback on the drafts. You can follow the project’s progress here.

New AAP Voices Blog on Pediatric Readiness

Joelle Simpson, MD, MPH, FAAP, authored a new AAP Voices blog titled, “Pediatric Readiness for the Everyday Emergency and Disasters”. This blog emphasizes that it is critically important for all hospital emergency departments to have the appropriate resources, including staff with specific skills, training, and education, to provide effective pediatric emergency care. AAP Voices is the official blog of the AAP, where AAP member pediatricians and others share their perspectives on a wide variety of topics relating to children's health and wellness. This blog was released during EMS week, and the concepts referenced are included within the AAP policy Pediatric Readiness in the Emergency Department.

New Article Evaluates Effectiveness of AAP/CDC Virtual Tabletop Exercise

In 2017, the AAP collaborated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to conduct a Pediatric and Public Health Virtual Tabletop Exercise. This exercise connected members of the AAP Disaster Preparedness Advisory Council and other facilitators (at CDC offices in Atlanta) with state teams within federal Region VII (Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska) who met in state-specific locations using virtual meeting technology. Each team included pediatric and public health representatives. Based on the results of this virtual exercise, an article was published in Public Health Reports titled, “Extending the Reach of Pediatric Emergency Preparedness: A Virtual Tabletop Exercise Targeting Children’s Needs”. This article summarized the effectiveness of a virtual tabletop exercise in improving preparedness capabilities specific to children’s needs among pediatricians and public health practitioners.

See the AAP Pediatric and Public Health Tabletop Exercise Web page and Chapter 6 of the Pediatric Disaster Preparedness and Response Topical Collection titled, “Pediatric Preparedness Exercises”, for additional information. For additional details, e-mail DisasterReady@aap.org.

Are You Following @UNCPAR?!

In March, the EMSCPulse included an update on the North Carolina Targeted Issues Grantee program, the Performance Adherence Reports (PAR) Project. Are you following their Twitter feed? Not only do they tweet on their own project, @UNCPAR tweets on a lot of things about caring for kids. See a few screenshots below and consider following them so that you can stay up to date! You can also check out the UNC PAR Project on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn!

NHTSA Recognizes National CPR and AED Awareness Week with Launch of New Telecommunicator and High-Performance CPR Toolkit

CPR LifeLinks Resources Help Unite EMS and 911 to Save Lives from Cardiac Arrest

A toolkit of resources, including videos and training materials, is now available to help EMS and 911 agencies improve on the average 10 percent national survival rate from cardiac arrest. Each year more than 250,000 people experience out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), and telecommunicator CPR and high-performance CPR programs at EMS and 911 agencies nationwide can help save more lives.

"The research clearly shows that the impact of interventions early after a cardiac arrest are the most important," says Ben Bobrow, MD and CPR LifeLinks project lead. "This underscores why EMS and 911 systems are the most crucial parts of the chain of survival."

The CPR LifeLinks initiative was created to support EMS and 911 agencies in their collaborative efforts to save more lives due to OCHA. Resulting from recommendations by the Institute of Medicine's 2015 report, Strategies to Improve Cardiac Arrest Survival: A Time to Act, the objectives of this project were to:

• Define best practice recommendations for performing Telecommunicator CPR, as well as develop training and implementation guidelines that can be customized and implemented by 911 centers
• Define best practice recommendations for High-Performance CPR to be used by trained EMS personnel and develop a training curriculum and implementation guide

Two working committees of physicians, paramedics, and 911 training and operational experts collaborated to create a practical toolkit that serves as a resource for EMS and 911 agencies interested in working together to improve OHCA response within their community.

The toolkit includes:

• Information about the science of cardiac arrest
• Tips for engaging leadership support for CPR improvement programs
• Recommendations for training and continuous quality improvement efforts
• Training tools such as videos and audio recordings of 911 calls

It also provides tips to help overcome common challenges and to establish survivor recognition programs, connecting telecommunicators and EMS personnel with the people whose lives they save. To download the Toolkit, visit ems.gov or 911.gov.

The effort was funded by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's Office of EMS, the National 911 Program, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau and Emergency Medical Services for Children Program. The toolkit was created with the support of the University of Arizona's Emergency Medicine Research Center, and Resurgent Biomedical Consulting.