Earlier today I received an email asking for my list of the top developments in the history of EMS. Since the EMS profession is only about 40 years young it is fairly easy to reflect back on its entirety. Although, my EMS career is just a fraction of that time span historical developments have a significant impact on the paramedic scope of practice I am authorized to use.

I often tell students that medicine is dynamic and some of the things we used to we no longer do. Things we do now we might not do in the future. I shudder when EMS veterans tell me about providing mouth-to-mouth ventilation to vomiting strangers or applying direct pressure to a bleeding wound with their ungloved hand. Fortunately, I entered EMS just as proper personal protective equipment (PPE) was achieving widespread adoption.

This is the list of top developments that I submitted:

1. HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and MRSA
2. Declining patient health/aging population with increasing rates of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and respiratory disease
3. pre-arrival caller instructions from dispatch for bystander CPR
4. portable manual and automated defibrillation
5. online initial, recertification, and refresher education

Click on the comments button to submit your ideas for the top developments in the history of EMS.

Tags: EMS, History, Paramedic

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 3:20 pm and is filed under News & Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.