Critical Care in 911 EMS with Wesley Rogers, NRP, FP-C and Donnie Rose, NRP, CCP

Well, you know, first of all, I definitely agree with you.

There has been a push in recent years to to do that better.

And I think, I think that comes from a couple of different places.

I think that, um, you know, due to any number of factors, some of our skills had degraded a little bit and we started to receive some negative press and, um, and the, and the population of medics that is strong really didn't want to lose that.

Um, you know, those skillsets that we talked about, right.

And so the, the thought kind of was like, let's look at the flight community and, and, and see what they're doing because they're, you don't hear about flight crews, you know, losing proficiency or, um, you know, letting their skills degrade at all, you know? And so we started kind of looking at what they were doing.

And I think, you know, that was probably one of the most helpful things is, you know, recognizing, okay, these people have FPC training or, Um, you know, and there's a lot, uh, you know, a lot to be said for that.

Um, and they're very good about, um, doing, you know, just routine informal training around the base and working to make each other better.

Um, you know, which is really cool.

So, um, you know, and I think the other, the other factor as far as, um, you know, The focus on critical care and EMS is we're very much wanting to advance our profession.

And advancing our profession, you know, by offering associate's degrees and bachelor's degrees in the field of paramedicine or EMS is definitely one way to do it.

But another way to do it is to continually try to advance our skill set in incorporating critical care into the 911 world would seem like a really great way to do that.

I'm not sure Wes' take on that, but that's kind of how I see it and where that push is coming from.

And Wes, you had dropped off and came back while Don was talking.

And what I had prompted was, what do you think of having critical care in 911 before we delve into the details?

Yeah, I'm, you know, all for it, obviously, as Don said.

I am a big proponent of the, you know, bachelor's degree, associate degree program and structure professionalism in EMS.

But I see this as being separate than that.

To have critical care designation and structure for that in EMS helps you funnel some of the more advanced procedures, advanced assessments of that advanced medication use into a more kind of a tip of the spear approach.

It's hard to take everybody within an area, a given area, and bring them up to that and try to raise that floor.

But obviously, while as educators, we always try to raise our floor, critical care helps you also raise your ceiling.

So it's, you don't want to pull down or hold paramedics back that maybe they're approaching seven, eight years in, they want more, they want to do more, they have the skills, they have the knowledge, they have the wisdom.

You don't want to hold them back while you're also training up your one, two, and three-year paramedics in raising that portion of the floor.

You still want to give a clinical ladder to those certain medics.

And then also it helps you drill down and specify the education for that too, because as you get more in critical care, the educational burden becomes greater.