Vendor Viewpoint: Lose the Pandemic, Keep the Innovations

Vendor Viewpoint is a platform for our advertising partners to expound upon future directions in technologies, vehicles, accessories, educational offerings, and other products EMS providers rely on to perform their jobs. EMS World’s editorial staff does not endorse or promote any products or companies discussed in this column.

As we prepare for the 10th month of the COVID-19 pandemic, many EMS providers are facing increasing cases, hospitalizations, and struggles worse than those seen previously. While there are positive developments on the vaccine front, it is likely we will still be dealing with the pandemic for months to come. This likely means continued change to the way we deliver EMS education. 

The NREMT removed limitations on distributive education in March 2020 and extended that waiver through the 2021 recertification season in August but put restrictions in place for its 2022 cycles.

Was that announcement premature? Do we need to continue to allow distributive education solutions? Should we even have limits on distributive education?

The NREMT’s mission centers on “protecting the public and advancing the EMS profession.” The move toward encouraging distributive education is aimed at reducing the risks of in-person gatherings. It met an industry need in a year that saw multiple cancellations of CE courses, conferences, and refreshers.

During this time, the industry became innovative. Vendors launched updates to make their products work in a distance environment, educators became Zoom experts, simulation embraced the virtual environment. EMS World Expo 2020 was held 100% virtually. 

These innovations should not be dismissed even if we return to more regular in-person conferences, trainings, and events in 2021. We should be learning from our adaptations and advancing our profession by evolving, not reverting back to stoic notions about what type of continuing education is worthy of credit.

We’ve seen the benefit of clinicians sharing their experiences via recorded webinars so those who had yet to face the pandemic could prepare. Is watching those recordings any less valid than sitting through a canned slide presentation in a traditional classroom? 

We saw changes to practice happen rapid-fire, with agencies moving from nebulized treatments to metered-dose inhalers, the changing availability and recommendations for PPE, use of intubation boxes, etc. We shared evolving information about prone positioning and “happy hypoxics” and did it in close to real time with webinars, blog posts, and distributive methods.

You didn’t need to be able to accommodate Italy’s or New York’s time zones; you could retrieve the information and still improve patient care and provider safety and stay up to date. Isn’t this the goal of continuing education?

Last year also saw unprecedented burdens and stress on our workforce. Many agencies lost providers in the pandemic, and many across our country are struggling with lost jobs, social isolation, trying to homeschool and work from home, and a disease that strikes indiscriminately.

Is it in the best interest of our workforce to mandate synchronous sessions, specific learning modalities, and traditional education? Distributive education has been shown effective across multiple spectrums and is adaptable for EMS professionals already facing burnout.  

Leadership is also facing budget shortfalls. You could argue that EMS, especially EMS education, has long been underfunded, but the landscape of the pandemic means funding will be cut, redirected, and generally unavailable.

In-person, synchronous training is time-consuming and resource-intensive. Distributive education is cost-effective. It allows providers to receive the same information across shifts and locations, with flexibility for departments hit with staffing shortages. 

Distributive education is just another name for asynchronous learning. Asynchronous learning has been a viable education strategy since the early 19th century. Standardization was a benefit employed by the military in World War II and has continued with the video-based courses of the American Heart Association.

Asynchronous learning is equivalent to synchronous learning already in many aspects of healthcare. An ACLS card doesn’t indicate if the learner mastered the content with an instructor-led course or a self-paced virtual course. The cards are the same, and we should value the delivery model the same as well, especially when the testing standards and skills standards remain unchanged. 

Last year was one most people look forward to having in the past. As we hope for vaccines and in-person conferences for 2021, let’s also hope our institutions and leaders embrace progressive policies that account for the innovations we’ve had during this challenging year.  

Chris Kroboth, MS, NRP, CCEMT-P, has been a career paramedic/firefighter for the last 15 years and in EMS for more than 21. He is also U.S. clinical education manager for iSimulate.