Integrating Continuing Education Credits with Collegiate EMS Training

With providers maintaining active certifications and certifications often expiring during a provider’s collegiate EMS tenure, it becomes important for an EMS agency to craft a strategy to assist provider re-certification. The Penn Medical Emergency Response Team (MERT) develops 10-15 student-led training drills per academic semester, which each EMT attends. When EMTs were unable to attend, the provider was required to complete equal amounts of online CME to make up the missed training. However, MERT sought positively encouraging EMTs to attend agency specific training while providing CME in a matter logistically feasible for a collegiate EMS agency. MERT leveraged close partnerships with the University Of Pennsylvania Division Of Public Safety to reinvigorate an EMS teaching certificate. For drills, MERT recruited experts who could be listed as CME providers and mentored students through topics essential for an EMS provider. In October 2018, MERT organized a symposium with 6 guest speaker lectures across a variety of cutting edge EMS topics with over 50 providers from 6 agencies attending. With integrating CME credits into MERT’s training curriculum, MERT hopes that providers who attend each required training have the benefit of having the credits necessary to re-certify in their graduation year, if they so choose.