10 Steps to Become a Lifelong Learner

Deciding to be a lifelong leaner will not only benefit your clinical skills and career, it can drastically improve your attitude toward work and life in general. The key is to take conscious, active steps and not rely on education as something that will simply happen through life experience or mandatory class time. Investigating the things that interest you can improve your skills and bring professional pride and satisfaction. Here are 10 steps you can take right now.

1. Identify your weak spots—Start with the knowledge, skills and abilities you believe you could strengthen, but wherever you can seek outside evaluation. It can be tough to hear you’re not as good as you want to be, but that is far better than having blind spots as an EMS provider that come to light on an emergency call. Use online tests to verify your level of understanding and expertise in a subject. Reach out to coworkers, superiors and those who report to you and ask what they feel you might improve.

2. Revisit material you’ve studied before—Not only may information have been updated since the last time you investigated a topic, but all your new life and professional experience will give you a better “mental machine” to process prior information and see it with new meaning and usefulness.

3. Do not evaluate new information as simply true or false—Use critical-thinking skills to understand the purpose of new information and how you can apply it in your practice. Did this information come from a trusted source that has been vetted? Do you trust the person from whom you’ve learned this information to be treated as an expert?

4. Use the AA-BB-CC method to evaluate new information—This is important to be able to do for any information, but especially information from the Internet.

• Authority—Is the source an expert in this topic?
• Accuracy—Is this information verifiably accurate?
• Background—What is the context for this information?
• Bias—Might the creator or supplier of this information have a bias?
• Coverage—Is this information evaluated from different angles or only one point of view?
• Currency—How up to date is this?

5. Embrace uncertainty—Understand that there is very little “truth” in medicine. There is, rather, “what we know right now.” It can be difficult, but continue to put yourself in uncomfortable situations. You’re not going to learn anything new, or how to apply it, by simply hearing it or doing the same old things you’ve always done.

6. Cherish both training and experience; they go hand in hand—A great EMS educator once said that experience keeps you from messing up a second time, while training helps keep you from messing up the first time.

7. Apply your knowledge at higher levels—Keep in mind the levels of learning from Bloom’s Taxonomy and always seek to raise your level of knowledge.

• Remember—The most basic level: Recognize and recall facts.
• Understand—Don’t just know the facts; know what the facts mean.
• Apply—Use facts, rules, concepts and ideas in a real-world setting.
• Analyze—Break down information into component parts and understand how they come together.
• Evaluate—Judge the value of information or ideas.
• Create—The pinnacle of understanding: Use your knowledge to solve problems in a new way in a dynamically changing environment. This is the level required of EMS field providers.

8. Used spaced repetition—The spaced-repetition method means you don’t simply learn something and then assume that it will always be there, ready for you to use. When you learn something new, make time to come back to the topic and learn a little bit more not long after what you first learned. Then come back to it to review and expand your knowledge again, each time waiting a little longer to come back. Some education theorists recommend waiting first hours, then days, then months when returning to the same subject to improve both memorization and understanding.

9. Strive for learning, not perfection—Striving for perfection can focus your attention on the wrong details, while striving for knowledge will continue to enforce the habits of learning and continued improvement. This will also help with critical thinking, as it embraces the idea that learning, knowledge and skill is a path that must be walked, not a destination that will be reached.

10. At every opportunity, kaizen—Kaizen is the Japanese word for continuous improvement. The idea is to make at least small progress every day. Simply take a moment to learn something new every day or use something you already know in a new way to apply the concept of kaizen to your EMS knowledge, skills and abilities.

Learning, like so many things that are healthy, can become a habit with regular practice. Be a force multiplier in EMS. Think about what you’ve learned and practiced each day and share it. This is how we all get better at what we do and improve our profession along the way.

Rommie L. Duckworth, LP, is a dedicated emergency responder and award-winning educator with more than 25 years working in career and volunteer fire departments, hospital healthcare systems, and public and private emergency medical services. He is currently a career fire captain and paramedic EMS coordinator.