Protecting the Golden Hour

Area residents typically are Caucasian, but a small number of American Indians and Hispanics also live in the region. The area has a large number of elderly residents, and the region’s unemployment rate remains unacceptably high. Sources of income for area residents include logging, lumber mills, farming, forestry, fisheries, mining, and retail trades. The region includes two State prison facilities, a psychiatric hospital, and three medical hospitals.

The project consortium members included Lewis-Clark State College (LCSC), which oversaw project activities; the Idaho State Region 2 Emergency Medical Bureau; St. Mary’s Hospital and Clinics; Syringa General Hospital; Clearwater Valley Hospital and Clinics; Clearwater National Forest; and EMS units throughout the region.

The online training component for providing basic EMT training was the project’s most innovative feature. This approach eliminated the need for individuals to travel a long distance to receive training and laid the foundation to decrease the burden on the 18 EMS units in the region by expanding their workforce. The project also developed a Web page, which provided the focal point for communicating with EMS personnel throughout the region.

Internet connectivity, however, proved to be a barrier for the project. Many rural areas were limited to 28.8Kbps lines, which made it difficult to transmit videos electronically. Project staff members discussed the possibility of distributing the videos by CD or cassette to EMS personnel; however, the companies that own the videos wanted to charge unreasonably high fees to allow the project to edit clips from existing videos into a new video for distribution. In addition, many communities were not technologically equipped to handle streaming video. Nevertheless, the project’s online training component was successful despite the problems with Internet connectivity.

The training has been pilot-tested to determine its success in instructing basic EMTs. The course will continue to be evaluated to improve the quality of the training program. The project learned that the distance-learning format is most effective, at least initially, when a field coordinator delivers clinical instruction. Other instructors will be trained to teach the online portion of the course after the training program is improved. It should be noted, however, that some community instructors were reluctant to change their teaching techniques to accommodate a distance-learning format.

The online courses will continue to be available to the public. The online EMT instructor will continue to work with local EMS units to assist clinical instructors in teaching the online class. The project also offers annual prehospital workshops that focus on different topics of relevance to basic and advanced EMTs. The most recent workshop focused on geriatric prehospital care.