Paramedic Licensure

[Guest guest]

AN OPEN LETTER TO DR. GORDON:

Dear Dr. Gordon:

I am disappointed to hear that you continue to oppose the

recommendations of the Project Alpha Task Force and the subcommittees'

recommendations concerning ACLS and retesting. The processes that were

involved in arriving at those recommendations were democratic

processes, affording all who were interested the ability to contribute

and argue their positions on many different occasions. The

recommendations made reflected the majority's position after an enormous

amount of debate.

The group who continue to oppose the will of the majority remind me of

Orwell's expression in Animal Farm that even though all are equal, some

are more equal than others. It doesn't seem to be able to recognize

that a democratic process exists, was carried out, and its position did

not prevail. Will you and the others who share your opinions now

continue to oppose the will of the majority at every level up to the

Texas Board of Health and beyond?

Please consider the fact that the overwhelming majority of educators and

paramedics support the changes to the licensure rule that were reported

to ECHAC, or, to be more precise, would have been reported but for the

problems encountered with the time limits. At some point folks need to

recognize the democratic process and accept its results. I would urge

that you and the others do that.

I doubt the world will end if we don't include ACLS and retesting in the

rule. You'll always have the prerogative of requiring ACLS for your

medics, and if you really want meaningful retesting, do scenario testing

which is the only thing that really measures performance. Professionals

have to be self-motivated to maintain a knowledge base, as members of

the medical and legal professions do. I like to think that licensed

paramedics would also maintain that level of professional responsibility

without the fear of a recertification exam as motivation. Either we're

professionals or we're not. If we're not, then we don't need to be

licensed to begin with.

As we gain more and more knowledge about learning, we see that

memorization of facts and regurgitation of them during an exam is the

poorest form of measurement because it does nothing to measure the

higher order thinking skills, analysis, synthesis, evaluation, judgment,

critical thinking and performance. Better we focus our efforts toward

determining how to REALLY measure performance. I believe performance

measurement would stand you in much greater stead than a periodic

written exam.

Sorry I missed you when you were in Tyler,

Gene Gandy

--

E. Gandy, JD, EMT-P

EMS Professions Program Director

Tyler Junior College

Tyler, TX

ggan@...

Check out our website at: http://www.tyler.cc.tx.us/emmt/

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