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This NAEMT Course is designed as true continuing education for professionals interested in enhancing their pediatric assessment and treatment skills. Rather than simply reviewing basic skills, this course goes beyond the traditional DOT material, making it useful for caregivers at all levels and experience. The Emergency Pediatric Care Course (EPC) is an in-depth study of the prehospital care of injured and ill children. This course emphasizes a pragmatic approach and format, based on teaching providers a problem focused assessment based approach while concentrating on what they need to know. The curriculum is designed to allow for a minimal amount of lecture and an ample amount of actual hands-on practice using case based scenarios. Because medicine is ever changing, periodic revisions and updates will occur as the scientific and medical fields uncover new advances and techniques.
Course Features
- Approximately 16 hours in length, the NAEMT course provides for both didactic and practical applications, helping providers keep up to date with the most current information and techniques.
- Course covers material well beyond the DOT curriculum, providing more than just a repeat of material students should have received in their initial training.
- Topics covered include: physiological differences in the pediatric patient, pediatric assessment and working with children, airway management, respiratory and cardiovascular assessment and management, hypoperfusion, vascular access, trauma (assessment, mechanism of injury, burns), neonatal, special needs patients, altered mental status, seizures, common medical emergencies, medicolegal, and child abuse and neglect.
- There is also a BLS program that is an 8-hour program designed for providers whose time constraints may not allow them to take the 16-hour program, but who still wish to participate in a program to improve their care of children. This format will cover all the fundamental BLS knowledge and skills a provider would need to help the sick or injured child.
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Goals of the Course
The hands-on EPC course gives each provider/student the ability to integrate the knowledge presented into a practical format for use in his or her current practice. This course is directed at the prehospital assessment and treatment of the pediatric patient, but can be altered and of benefit to the initial emergency department assessment and management of the pediatric patient. The format and administrative policies set forth are those of the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians (NAEMT) for Continuing Medical Education Courses.
The major goals of the EPC course are to:
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Educate the provider in the unique aspect of pediatric anatomy, physiology and pathophysiology that will impact on prehospital assessment and treatment.
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Allow the provider to integrate pathophysiology with the assessment findings in the pediatric patient.
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Improve the provider's ability to conduct a competent assessment of the pediatric patient that utilizes understanding of the developmental considerations, proper diagnostic skills, critical thinking, and interventions.
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Decide between those conditions which require emergent or urgent prehospital intervention and those which merely require transport to a hospital.
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Enhance the provider's ability to utilize problem-solving strategies in interventions and management alternatives.
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Improve the provider's overall comfort level in dealing with sick and injured children.
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Refine the provider's ability to identify and communicate the pertinent findings and interventions to the receiving facility.
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Target Audience
The course is geared to the prehospital provider who will provide care to the ill or injured child. As the levels of prehospital encompass a varied group of training and certification/licensure levels, the materials and different course formats can accommodate this wide variety of providers. The typical participants will include Emergency Medical Technicians at the Basic, Intermediate and Paramedic levels, Physicians Assistants and Nurses.
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Letter from EPC Medical Director - Dr. Lou Romig (names removed/amended for website use)
Dear Sir,
You should by now have received Bob's factual chart comparing the various pediatric courses. Now, I'd like to share my own opinions with you. As a practicing pediatric emergency doc of 18 years, one of the original PEPP course developers (before the last "P" was added) and the new National Medical Director of the EPC, I think I have some background with which to comment.
Objectively, your providers of all levels will probably benefit equally from either EPC or PEPP. I would strongly encourage you to go with a course developed specifically for prehospital providers. I'd recommend that your ALS providers also take PALS at least once. At this time (and for the foreseeable future), both PEPP and EPC can then serve as official PALS refresher courses. Neither PEPP nor EPC were developed to replace PALS, but to complement it.
Now,subjectively... If you check out the AAP's peppsite.com website, you'll notice that any attempted communication by providers and their agencies goes to an anonymous PEPP staff address. You won't know who you're trying to talk to until they respond to you. Although PEPP has an outstanding National Steering Committee, there is no National Medical Director (although 2 Peds EM physicians who I trust explicitly are committee co-chairs). Indeed, the page that lists the Steering Committee completely omits any contact information for committee members.
What's my point? As an original author of the PEPP course and a proud member of the AAP, I must honestly tell you that PEPP is an outstanding course. It's shiny and looks really slick, due to the AAP's rich resources. It will serve your providers very well indeed. I will never doubt the AAP's dedication to serving our children and families. By the very nature of the organization, however, nonphysician providers take at least third priority, after the kids and then physicians. I personally don't believe that the AAP will support you as an agency administrator and your instructors the way NAEMT can.
Objectively, I believe EPC as a course is the equal to PEPP if you disregard the patina that only big money can purchase. EPC, however, is both a big-city and a small-town course with a small-town administrative feel. As evidenced by Bob's and my replies to you, you can access either or both of us via this list or personal email at any time. I'll give you and anyone my phone contact numbers as well, as will Bob or probably any one of the EPC Executive Committee members. You will not get that kind of service from the AAP. They're simply too big.
I strongly feel that a course for EMS providers should rest in the hands of an organization whose primary mission is to support those providers and their patients, so long as the organization has the good sense to enlist the guidance of and supervision by appropriate clinicians with superior quantitative and qualitative experience. NAEMT has established a strong track record of working with specialty physician Medical Directors in its PHTLS and AMLS courses. It has also demonstrated itself capable of the administration of such courses.
Sir, you will not dis-serve your providers and communities by choosing either EPC or PEPP. I do believe, however, that you will be more comfortable with the administrative and medical direction services of NAEMT and our EPC family. You have my personal commitment to be there to back you up as the course's National Medical Director at any time that you or your providers have any questions or concerns.
Good luck in your decision making process and thank you for looking out for your providers and your communities!
Lou Romig MD
EPC National Medical Director
lou.romig@epcnet.org |
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