CMC Educators bring home best practice ideas from annual event
EMS Director Mike Trujillo, Clinical Coordinator Ken Rogers and Paramedic Professor Liz Owen attended the 16th Annual Educational Symposium & Trade Show Sept. 13-18 in Reno, Nevada. The National Association of EMS Educators (www.naemse.org) puts on the event. Their mission is to “Inspire Excellence in EMS Education and Lifelong Learning” and they did just that with this national conference.
Randy Mantooth was the keynote speaker. He portrayed Firefighter/Paramedic Johnny Gage from 1972-1979 on the popular “EMERGENCY” television series. The series helped advance the fire-based paramedic career field across the nation.
With so many sessions to choose from, it is no wonder the Colorado Mountain College team came back with great ideas to implement. Here are just a few of the best practices learned at the Symposium.
Simulated Scenarios in the Lab—A How to Session with Dennis Edgerly:
•Do not give students more than 4 choices for different diagnosis.Use a pocket recorder for patient assessments.
•Re-run: Run call, critique call then re-run the same call. Gives students a chance to re-do. It can make them feel better and improve the grade.
•Completely write/script simulation scenarios with no wiggle room for instructor creativity.
•Do not include skills students do not have.
•No “pretend” procedures or equipment.8
•Make jump kit organization part of the grade.
•Add siren noises when going emergent•
•Shop moulage supplies after Halloween.
Continuing Education: The Biggest Challenge to Teaching with Twink Dalton:
“Twink Dalton’s lecture was important because I realized that I’ve gotten too weighted down with the minutia of Paramedic. There are a lot of things that I did 20 years ago that still apply and actually help those students learn. She went back to some great teaching techniques that don’t go out of fashion. It was a good class on how to make your students remember some very complicated information. I’m going to use the stories to explain Pathophysiology.” – Liz Owen
Trading Post:
“I think this is one of the most valuable sessions. I gathered a great deal of new material that I can put into the program. This material can be inserted into Powerpoints or uploaded as video for learning.”
Contact with Laerdal and Jones and Barlett
Laerdal’s new rep will be coming for a visit. CMC educators also made contact with reps from publisher Jones and Bartlett and learned about the new textbook and its Learning Management System, Navigate. Thanks to this contact, Liz and Ken will be attending a webinar detailing the setup of the LMS.
Hybrid EMS Education: One Programs Journey to Success (Matthew Scott and Chris Corson from Virtua School of Paramedic Science, Camden County College, Blackwood, NJ):
Colorado Mountain College’s paramedic program is converting to hybrid format in January and this session underscored the importance of planning! Several other conference sessions contributed to Liz’s journey to Success.
Next year’s event will take place August 6-11 in Orlando, Florida. Perhaps one or more of our faculty will give a session to benefit the many attendees hungry for new or better ideas!
–Peggy Curry, 9/30/11