Are you currently working as an emergency medical technician and want to advance your career? Then you'll want to take up paramedic courses, which is the highest level of EMT training. A year on the job as EMT would have given you sufficient experience and insight to consider furthering your training.
That means learning more skills and doing more when responding to emergency cases to provide pre-hospital care and treatment. While hands-on experience is still the best teacher, more training is paramount because without proper skills, you may end up causing more harm than helping.
Basic skills
With your EMT Level 1 training, you needed at least 120 to 150 hours of training to become familiar with basic anatomy and physiology; patient assessment, identifying the medical from the trauma patients; airway management; different medical emergencies and trauma emergencies, handling infants and children, and operations including ambulance operations, rescue and extrication, multiple patient situations, and hazardous materials situations.
You may or may not have actual experience for some of these cases, but it is imperative to be professionally equipped to handle every possible situation.
Now, you want to proceed to becoming a paramedic. Just a reminder: there are usually three levels of EMT training, and the paramedic is the highest level of emergency medical technology.
There is an intermediate level, but if you truly have the heart to work in this field of healthcare, some schools offer an EMT to Paramedic advance course so that even with just basic training and at least a year of work experience, you will already be prepared for paramedic certification after taking up paramedic courses. You will need from 1,200 to 1,800 hours of training to qualify for certification as paramedic.
Paramedic core program
There are at least four paramedic courses or areas that you really need to master.
1. Advanced Anatomy and Physiology - This is no longer just an overview of the human body, its structure and functions. The course will focus on muscular, skeletal and nervous systems.
Other topics that may be included are cells and tissues, electrolytes, nutrition and even acid-base balance, as these are essential factors when responding to emergency cases. Students are taught how medical emergencies impact on normal physiology and anatomy.
2. Cardiology - Many emergency cases are due to cardiovascular conditions, so learning how to handle these cases is important.
You will be provided the skills to handle patients suffering from heart-related problems, learning how to recognize arrhythmia, using the EKG apparatus and diagnosing cardiovascular conditions. First aid treatments like drugs and electrical intervention are also discussed in this course.
3. Pharmacology - Since drugs are used to manage emergency medical conditions, the course will teach you to determine which medication are for cardiac, respiratory, gastrointestinal, neurological and other conditions. You need to be familiar with 80 to 100 medications.
More importantly, you will learn how drug intervention can restore the physiological state of an injured person back to normal. Legal and ethical issues related to drug administration are also taken up in this course.
4. Operations and Rescue Practices - this sums up what an EMT does so it will review first responder techniques and practices. Rescue operations, awareness, rescue situations, terrorism response, crime scene awareness are also taken up in depth in this course.
Likewise, you will be introduced to and should be competent at using complex medical and rescue equipment stored in rescue vehicles or ambulances such as defibrillators. You will also learn how to administer medication intravenously, or insert tracheal tubes, if necessary.
Paramedic courses or training is necessary to attain this level in your career as EMT. It may lead to an associate degree or not, depending on which school you attend. Becoming a paramedic is not easy, and the neither is the actual work involved. It is not for the faint of heart because you will deal with gunshot wounds, fractures, open wounds and even childbirth.
The classroom instruction, or even online EMT training (for part of the program) will prepare give you the added skills and techniques as you progress in this level of emergency medical technician. But ultimately, it is the hands-on experience that will truly make you the professional.
After completing your paramedic courses, you can then take the national certification exam that will finally allow you to become a full-fledged paramedic. Although different states have varying requirements for certification, there are many that recognize the certification issued by other states. This means you may have completed the training in MA and took the exam there, but you can later opt to work in NJ and this will be valid.
So if helping save lives is your calling, complete your paramedic courses the soonest and start looking into ways to increase your paramedic salary.
