Paramedic
Paramedic
The paramedic is a health professional whose primary focus is to respond to, assess, and triage emergent, urgent, and non-urgent requests for medical care, apply basic and advanced knowledge and skills necessary to determine patient physiologic, psychological, and psychosocial needs, administer medications, interpret and use diagnostic findings to implement treatment, provide complex patient care, and facilitate referrals and/or access to a higher level of care when the needs of the patient exceed the capability level of the paramedic. A paramedic often serves as a patient care team member in a hospital or other health care setting to the full extent of the paramedic’s education, certification, licensure, and credentialing. Paramedics may work in community settings where they take on additional responsibilities monitoring and evaluating the needs of at-risk patients, as well as intervening to mitigate conditions that could lead to poor outcomes. Paramedics help educate patients and the public in the prevention and/or management of medical, health, psychological, and safety issues.
- Function as part of a comprehensive EMS response, community, health, or public safety system with advanced clinical protocols and medical oversight.
- Perform interventions with the basic and advanced equipment typically found on an ambulance, including diagnostic equipment approved by an agency medical director.
- May provide specialized interfacility care during transport.
- Are an important link in the continuum of health care.
Other Attributes:
Paramedics commonly facilitate medical decisions at emergency scenes and during transport. Paramedics work in a variety of specialty care settings including ground and air ambulances, and in occupational, hospital, and community settings. Academic preparation enables paramedics to use a wide range of pharmacology, airway, and monitoring devices as well as use critical thinking skills to make complex judgments such as the need for transport from a field site, alternate destination decisions, the level of personnel appropriate for transporting a patient, and similar judgments. Due to the complexity of the paramedic scope of practice and the required integration of knowledge and skills, many training programs are moving towards advanced training at the Associate degree or higher level.
Focuses on the core professional responsibilities of a paramedic including the assessment and triage of emergent, urgent, and non-urgent pre-hospital medical care. Applies basic and advanced knowledge and skills necessary to determine patient physiologic, psychological, and psycho-social needs. Covers administration of medications, interpretation and use of diagnostic findings to implement pre-hospital patient treatment, facilitate referrals and/or access to a higher level of care.
Provides supervised hospital based and prehospital field training to paramedic students after successful completion of the Paramedic Studies (PM M10) coursework. Incorporates the didactic paramedic instruction into a practical clinical environment where paramedic students will perform assessments, determine patient priority, develop patient treatment plans and provide interventional patient care to emergency and non-emergency patients. Develops critical thinking skills, promotes decision making related to diversity and equity relating to emergency medical patients, incorporates didactic instruction with real world application of medical treatment and assessment for adult and pediatric patients.