I taught at our EMT-Intermediate class last night and while the class itself went very smoothly and I felt that the students got a lot out of it. I was a little disturbed when I spoke to them about EMS Research. We had been talking about CPAP, Intraosseous Infusion, and Capnography, and I mention that it was through clinical research that these skills were added to the prehospital scope of practice in our area and even more research that showed that they could be brought into the EMT-Intermediate scope of practice. I went on to a little tangent talking about how much of what we do in EMS today is not backed up by any actual evidence and how there needed to be much more research done to justify what we did today and determine what we should be doing in the future. I closed the tangent by saying that it was our obligation to assist as best we could any research project going on in our services or area so that EMS could continue to advance.
I was a little taken aback when one of the students responded with "What's research going to do for me on my shift tonight?" and when I replied that research takes time and effort. He snorted and stated that we'd be better off focusing on what we needed to do now and leave the research to the "eggheads" elsewhere. Having fallen behind schedule I was not going to be able to have that debate with him at that point in time.
I wish I had time to discuss just how important research is to the future of EMS and how we need to justify every single thing that we currently do and prove that works and is what is best for the patient. I know this and I think, given some time, I could prove this to my students and colleagues who don't believe it.
That being said I have to say that we do not spend enough time exposing our students or current providers to research, research procedures, and the importance of peer reviewed literature to making decisions on the future of EMS. I am finding that the amount of EMS research being done is so small compared to other areas of healthcare and some of what is being done is reaching conclusions that are painting EMS nationwide with such a broad brush or so specific that it is only relevant to a handful of systems that EMS providers just can't get a handle on the importance of it.
Several years ago I used to subscribe to the EMS Journal Club. The EMS Journal Club was a group of 3 EMS physicians and a paramedic who got together quarterly and picked a handful of articles published in peer reviewed journals and discussed how they were important (or not important) to EMS, how well (or not well) the research was done, and generally gave me my first exposure to research, research procedures, and really cemented home the importance of prehospital research in my mind.
In the days of easy access to programs such as these in the form of podcasts it is about time for something like this to make a comeback.
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