Hello EMT City,
First let me say that Mandy don't feel like your being picked on. I know where your coming from. Yes Basic's play an important role, and yes (I know your education/training background) you learned many valuable things as a basic/intermediate. However, the question here is if fast tracking Military Medics Army 68W or Airforce 4N's would provide a service to our communities and country. To that question I have to give a very loud and clear response NO NO NO and NO! I have worked with and trained both AF and Army medics and I have to say it is the exception not the rule that they are skilled in the care of the sick and injured. Most of these folks are great but spend the majority of there time in service in the clinical environment or dealing with very limited sports related injuries. Case in point a few weeks ago we attempted a pilot program at UAF to fast tract 68W through AK EMT II (NREMT I-85). The course was reduced to 20 hours and focused on pediatric assessment and care of the medical patient. The results were not good. That being said most of the 68W that ran though the course were very intelligent, well educated, high speed soldiers, and had they been given the full course in my estimate would have been highly successful. Most of those guys could give chest tubes and cut downs with the best of em, but lacked the knowledge to understand how medications they had given or why procedures they preformed worked. Again I'am not bashing the Military I work with AF/Army folks every day, and given their "extra clinical knowledge and OJT" many would likely make excellent intermediates. What I am getting at is that some of our veteran God Bless Em would do well in EMS but fast tracking is not appropriate for the vast majority of the medical career fields (MOS) even those that maintain EMT-B certification. Capt. D I agree AK needs significant changes, maybe we should start a thread on that one =D
