EMR: Worth it? Yes & No.....

[Termite]

This was our text book: http://www.bradybooks.com/store/product ... 0135037719

The upside: very good book for 1st level medical responders. Excellent illustrations, good references, important stuff is bolded and notes are in the margins. Decent glossary.
Downside: it was obvious from Day 1 that our instructor was more interested in creating "assistants" for himself and the other platform paramedics than he was interested in teaching true emergency medicine. That was OK by the other 5 guys in the class who were mostly there to "punch their ticket" and get 40 hrs on the clock, but I was looking for something more. We did lots of lecture, verbal scenarios, what-ifs, etc. But hands-on was lacking. We did pulse monitoring, BPs, tourniquets, and palpating. No pressure bandages, no backboards, no cervical collars.

I think I pissed off our instructor when I offered to have a local pal bring a pig in and shoot it with a .22 so we could bandage a sucking chest wound........

I think what I'm gonna do is once I have my state EMR card in hand, I'll trot down to my nearby fire station and sit down with the paramedics. The station is always asking for volunteers, and since I am now a state certified EMR in addition to being a marine fire fighter, maybe I can ride along for some real hands-on training.

[Aesop]

Sounds about par for the course.

Last I looked the national standard for a basic EMT was 110 hours give or take, lecture/lab/clinical/ridealong, but it's been a good while, and standards may have changed somewhat.

[First Shirt]

I got my EMT-Basic about 4 renewals ago, and the 110 hours classroom sounds about right. We had an additional 40 hours of ER/EMS, and six hours of practical evals BEFORE the National Registry test. Understand that now the practicals are part of the Registry test, but not sure how that works out.

Our first responder class was 40 hours + practicals + test.

[Termite]

Our first responder class was 40 hours + practicals + test.

Louisiana DHH no longer requires E.R. or ambulance time for the EMR certification. We did take a written test.

Could it have been better? Yes. The instructor could have done a lot more hands on stuff with us. I would have liked to spent time doing pressure bandages, splinting, practice installing an oropharyngeal airway, nasal cannulas, masks, etc.

Was it a waste of time? I don't think so, and I will get paid for going. I also got to keep my textbook, and it should be a great layman's reference manual. I also can create a free account for study guides and references at Brady Books.com using the code that came when the textbook was purchased.

[Aesop]

Last I looked, they rarely - if at all - cover pressure dressings at the paramedic, RN, or Physician Assistant levels, besides about 30 seconds of lip service.
FWIW, the best training I've ever received on it was a few hourse in the OCS classrooms at Ft. Knox, which were the same course as taught to enlisted recruits.
Go figure, the people most likely to need it actually pay attention to the basics.
Which is why I heartily encourage that and TCCC videos online. You can learn as much with that, leftover bandages, and an old store manikin as anything you'll get in a classroom.