We need more of these degree programs for EMS providers. Better education is key to making EMS more of a professional endevor and thus increasing salaries for providers.
For those of you going from EMT/EMT-P to pre-med you will run into many people some on admission committees who will tell you that their is no value in pre-hospital experiance ... They are wrong. My paramedic experiance helped me through med school and still is an ER doc.
Agreed.
While other allied health fields have gone to standard degree programs (eg, ASN, BSN, MSN, DSN/PhD), EMS still lags behind. We arent going to be paid or respected on the same level, when our colleagues know that while some of us are ER attendings, or have a Masters in Public Health, others of us havent graduated High School.
We don't even own our own realm. Many non-routine transports are done by non-EMS preactitioners (RNs, RRTs, MDs). The medical textbooks still tell the doctors that they have to staff the transports with non-EMS personnel. I suppose that's done because a nurse who sees neonates all day every day, will notice a decompensating neonate before a medic will... We dont even have the luxury of holding our own turf.
Once all EMS folks start playing the conventional education game, with undergrad and grad programs, and branching into MPH, MBA, MPA, JD etc, I think things will improve.
One of the keys is that we keep EMS as our primary career. Many of us that go for higher education, have to go where the job takes us. Many times that becomes being the MD for a single EMS unit, or Disaster Prep for an entire reigon. We've got a "brain-drain" worked right into the system.
We need to have college educators. researchers, politicians, bio-med engeneers, all working together to get EMS to stand on its own. While I think its possible in theory, I wonder if it will ever happen.
