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Changes in health care aren’t confined to hospitals and doctors’ offices.
Even the medical procedures used by the county’s rescue squads are adapting to new knowledge and the recent technological advances in health care.
Beginning this fall, emergency medical technicians trained in Virginia will be taught the new national standard EMT-B curriculum.
The revised curriculum is the result of years of field experience as well as advances in medical technology, according to Chuck Thompson, the county’s emergency services director. The new course, he said, “more accurately reflects the experiences EMTs actually face in the field.”
Students will be taught to treat patients.’ symptoms rather than to attempt to diagnose the cause of the symptoms, according to Bill Meadows, who oversees educational development at the Virginia Office of Emergency Medical Services. “In many cases, [diagnostic attempts] created delays in transport to a medical facility.”
This new assessment-based curriculum, he said, recognizes that the EMTs, particularly volunteers, “have other responsibilities. We cannot expect them to be there for the period of time needed to train doctors and nurses.”
For example, students will no longer be taught the six different types of fractures, Thompson said. Since the treatment is the same, the EMT must only be able to recognize a possible fracture and know how to _ treat it.
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