Education Rant

I recently had a chance to help with an EMT Basic class. I was asked to teach spinal immobilisation.

I was grinding my teeth the whole time.

Why do we still teach to immobilise based on mechanism? Why do we seem to think that spinal immobilisation is a completely benign procedure? Why don’t we teach our students to actually assess the PATIENT? Why aren’t we teaching them better or new physical assessment techniques? Why don’t we teach them to think?

Our textbooks are a few years old. They took several years to write. They were written based on accepted information and studies that were old at the time of writing. Net result: Our latest graduates have an outdated education when they finish their course.

They’re also tested on that outdated information by all the regulating bodies. That outdated information is our “standard of care.”

Why are we holding ourselves back? As it stands now, I think EMS is it’s own worst enemy.