Another Interesting Bill

[Guest guest]

As I read all of these posts about this accreditation issue I can't help but

wonder, to be in Texas law enforcement you pass an approved course consisting of

an approved curriculum and pass a STATE TEST. To be in the fire service in Texas

you pass a course consisting of an ACCREDITED CURRICULUM and pass a STATE TEST.

Why then to be in the EMS profession in Texas do you pass a course consisting of

a national standard curriculum and then have to take a test given by a bunch of

outsiders? You can't tell me that the DSHS can't develop and implement an

evaluation process to test our own students. We did it for years and it seemed

to work fine. I received my certification in 1988 and the course was harder than

the exam. TECLOSE and the TCFP have their own curriculums and evaluation

processes for years and they work just fine. They have never been asked to

" outsource " their evaluation process to save money. Maybe the DSHS should pay

them a visit and see how they do it.

Years ago when the legislature decided some cuts needed to be made who in the

DSHS thought that " outsourcing " our EMS testing was a good idea. It doesn't seem

to be such a good idea now does it? Especially when we have a bunch of

" outsiders " dictating to us what we are going to teach, how we will teach it,

and where they are going to allow us to teach it. The way I see it is we have

only two choices here. Either find a way to fund and take our program back,

provide oversight, and test our students ourselves or quit whinning and move

forward with the NR Accreditation process and just deal with it. We placed

ourselves in this position by relinquishing control of the evaluation process in

the first place.

In closing I just want to say that at the last Medical Director Committee

meeting Maxie Bishop hit the nail on the head when he stated " We are the State

of Texas. We should be leading not following " . We must ask ourselves the

question, " How's that outsourcing thing working out for us and are we leading or

being led? "