Overview
The very nature of the care provided by EMS clinicians routinely requires them to make rapid clinical decisions, based on limited information and be capable of providing that care to whomever is in need regardless of age, gender or pre-existing medical conditions. For nearly six decades, EMS clinical practice has continued to evolve as new science and technologies have emerged. Indeed, while many principles and elements of the care remain the same, the methodologies, skills, equipment, and medicaitons available to modern EMS would hardly be recognizable to the pioneers of out-of-hospital care. Navigating these changes, and the need to accommodate scope of practice levels, state laws, and local system design can prove to be a formidable task for agencies whose day-to-day operations leave minimal time available for the development of comprehensive, scientific, and clinically appropriate treatment guidelines and protocols.
The Future of Emergency Care: Emergency Medical Services at the Crossroads published by the Institute of Medicine (now the National Academies of Sciences) in 2007 addressed this gap stating, “NHTSA, in partnership with professional organizations, should convene a panel of individuals with multidisciplinary expertise to develop evidence-based model prehospital care protocols for the treatment, triage, and transport of patients.”