Mission Statement
The Department of Emergency Medical Services will:
- Provide contemporary EMS education at the Emergency Medical Technician and Paramedic level, preparing competent, entry-level practitioners in the cognitive, psychomotor, and affective domains.
- Improve healthcare in culturally diverse local and global communities through excellence in emergency medical service education, practice, and service.
Department Philosophy
Education is the outcome of an individual’s experiences occurring throughout the life cycle and attained through formal and informal activities. The teaching/learning process is a cooperative endeavor, is continuous and results in measurable changes in the learner’s behavior.
The role of the learner is to actively participate in the educational process in order for learning to be meaningful and useful. Learning is best achieved in an environment in which the person is accepted and respected.
EMS education relies on core competencies, which provide an infrastructure for developing critical thinking, decision-making, communication, values and technologies. The role of the faculty is to guide the rigorous educational process. Faculty will foster a professional, respectful learning environment through example, maintenance of discipline, and enforcement of standards. This process extends to the practice setting where education of the patient occurs.
Program Objectives
The program purposes, objectives and competencies reflect the Department of EMS’s mission and philosophy and are presented as follows:
- Offer a nationally accredited emergency medical service education program.
- Enhance higher order thinking, communication, research, and therapeutic interventions in the practice of professional pre-hospital emergency care.
- Promote lifelong learning activities for personal and professional development
- Furnish a foundation for management and leadership roles in emergency medical services.
- Prepare graduates to use Standards of Emergency Medical Care in a variety of settings
- Promote empathy for the values and perspectives of diverse cultures including an awareness of international and multicultural influences in emergency medical care.
The primary purpose of the EMS Program is to develop a graduate who is generally prepared to practice emergency medical care consistent with the program’s philosophy and nationally recognized standards of care. The graduate is capable of assuming the various roles of the professional EMS provider as a provider of patient care, patient educator, patient advocate, communicator and leader. The graduate performs the various roles in a variety of practice settings with a variety of patients be they individuals, families or aggregates.
The Paramedic Program builds upon the lower level/technical emergency medical service education and through the curriculum design produces a professional emergency care provider with definite knowledge and skills. The faculty has identified the graduate’s specific knowledge and skills through terminal objectives supported by the curriculum. The terminal objectives express the faculty’s intentions of the competencies a graduate must possess in order to practice advanced emergency medical care.
Terminal objectives which present the competencies of the graduate upon completion of the program are:
PROVIDER OF PATIENT CARE
- Establishes differential diagnoses based upon patient presentation within a theoretical framework of emergency medical care.
- Developing and executing treatment plans according to working differential diagnoses.
- Evaluates responses of patients to emergency medical care, making changes when necessary, in treatment plans of care independently or in consultation with emergency medical service colleagues and/or physician medical direction.
PATIENT EDUCATOR
- Assesses learning needs, readiness and motivation of individual clients, families and aggregates in relation to health promotion, maintenance and restoration.
- Formulates and implements teaching plans for individual patients, families and aggregates.
PATIENT ADVOCATE
- Develops treatment plans in accordance with the best interest and wishes of the patient.
- Communicates and supports patient best interest to patient, patient family, emergency medical service colleagues, and other healthcare providers.
COMMUNICATOR
- Establishes a rapport with patient, family, and care givers to facilitate effective patient assessment and treatment.
- Establishes and implements effective verbal and written communication practices to ensure continuity of patient care.
LEADER
- Functions as unit leader to direct emergency medical service colleagues and first responders to insure excellent and efficient patient care.
- Assumes various roles within the incident command system.
ROLES AND FUNCTION IN THE DISCIPLINE OF EMERGENCY MEDICAL SERVICE
- Bases practice upon the legal boundaries and ethical frameworks within the scope of own practice.
- Assumes responsibility for continued learning as a means of growth, development and maintenance of competence within the scope of own practice.
- Works within established policy and procedures of employing agency, recognizing policies and protocols that may impede patient care and works within the organization framework to initiate change.
