Becoming a full- or part-time Emergency Medical Technician requires extreme and rigorous training, and it’s not a career choice to be taken lightly. That’s because emergency medical responders encounter patients in life-threatening situations, ranging from traumatic incidences of cardiac arrest and auto accidents, to drownings to drug overdoses.

EMS techs like the ones we train here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education work for hospitals, municipalities, and fire departments, and often provide emergency assistance in everyday urban areas as well as at ski areas, throughout the backcountry, at sports events, and even on offshore oil rigs. As a result, those who choose to become EMTs face high-stress situations daily, often dealing with patients who have just suffered a life-changing trauma.

Long shifts in an emergency department or in the back of an ambulance can take a toll, as well poor sleeping habits to due irregular working hours and poor eating habits because of the on-the-run nature of the profession. To make things worse, there’s a stigma attached to EMTs that purports a higher rate of mental health disorders than other occupations, including an increased risk of depression, suicidal thoughts, and a higher rate of substance abuse.

Which is why it’s important that those working in emergency medical services avoid burnout and take care of themselves so that they can continue to support the communities they serve.

Here are some things you can do to take care of yourself as an EMT:

Intensive is one of those words that, when you say it out loud or write it down, sounds foreboding or, as the word itself suggests, promotes a feeling of tenseness. However, when we talk about completing an intensive EMT training course here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE), the word is not meant to scare you off.

Instead, it’s intent is to communicate the level of dedication you’re capable of putting into such a program, given the brief timeframe allotted for the program. And by brief, consider this: You can complete a high school EMT program in about a year. A university college course typically takes about six months to complete, and a community college course normally takes a semester.

However, to complete an intensive EMT course, such as those offered here at NCOAE, the work can be completed in just 21 days. That’s three short weeks. Boom! Done! Let me take the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians (NREMT) exam!

Benefits of the Intensive Approach to EMT Training

Know this: With an intensive program, you’re going to learn everything you need to know to take and pass the NREMT exam, and you’re going to learn it quickly. Just be prepared to take in a lot of information in a short amount of time. Here are a few of the advantages of intensive learning:

If one of your goals is to apply to medical school and eventually become a doctor, here are a few of the hurdles you’ll need to jump through. First, you’ll need a four-year Bachelor of Science degree with a minimum 3.0 GPA, a passing score on the MCAT exam, and a few glowing letters of recommendation.

But how would you like to increase your odds of getting admitted and succeeding in med school? If so, you may also want to consider getting trained and certified as an emergency medical technician (EMT) and gaining some valuable experience in the field first.

According to a survey of 67 medical schools in the United States and Canada, 85 percent of those schools responded favorably to applicants with experience as EMTs or paramedics. That’s not exactly surprising. After all, EMTs have real-world experience in the medical field.

In this post, we highlight the advantages of obtaining EMT training and experience prior to applying for and enrolling in medical school.

Build Your Foundational Knowledge

EMT training helps to build your foundational knowledge in several medical disciplines, including the following:

You’re thinking about becoming an EMT. Awesome! If you follow through, you will be joining the ranks of today’s modern-day heroes, the frontline of the frontline workers — bona fide life savers!

Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) are trained professionals who provide care in critical and emergency situations. Such emergencies can range from simple, routine calls to intense and complex scenarios.  

You may show up for a call only to discover that there is no victim, or the person is okay and refuses help, or a patient simply needs transportation from one medical facility to another. On the other hand, you could be called in to attend to the victim of a car accident or a shooting or a heart attack, drowning, mountaineering accident, or drug overdose. You may even have to deliver a baby! You can never predict what will happen over the course of any given shift.

As an EMT, your job responsibilities generally boil down to keeping patients alive using non-invasive medical procedures and transporting them safely to a hospital or clinic where they can receive a higher level of professional medical care. More specifically, you have three fundamental job responsibilities:

• Assessment and stabilization of the patient’s condition
• Basic life support
• Transportation

In this post, we bring you up to speed on the different levels in emergency medicine and credentialing while explaining the basic education and skills required to become an EMT.

Recognizing the Difference Between EMTs, AEMTs, and Paramedics

The National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians (NREMT) — that’s the leading certification agency in the U.S. covering prehospital medical providers — recognizes three levels of EMTs/paramedics:

What you need to know to succeed in an online EMT training course, from The National Center for Outdoor & Adventre Education

For those of us who work in the fields of outdoor and adventure-based experiential education and/or emergency medicine, the importance of professional medical training cannot be dismissed as merely “class time.”

While it’s true EMT training and certification may not be a requirement for many backcountry jobs or outdoor education positions, possessing certification for EMT qualifications far outweighs the Wilderness First Responder (WFR) certification, especially when it comes to landing your first or next job within this specialized field of ours.

Our certified EMS instructors are among the best in the industry and include veteran wilderness guides, EMT paramedics, firefighters, military operations specialists, and experts in critical care management. These educators provide expert instruction and personalized training that can ensure your EMT training meets and exceeds the high expectations all employers have for someone carrying such a designation.

Why You Should Consider the EMT Option

With EMT credentials in hand, our graduates have

“Adventure First, Education Always” is the rallying cry here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education’s (NCOAE). What you’ll find embedded in that statement is our commitment to students that they will return from our courses and trainings mentally, educationally and physically prepared for whatever brought them to us in the first place.

To that end, we offer a number of training courses that keep outdoor educators and backcountry guides up to date on the standard of care and best practices when managing medical emergencies in wilderness settings. In addition, we offer to the best of our knowledge the nation’s only 19-Day ‘Intensive’ EMT-Basic Training course.

EMT stands for Emergency Medical Technician — clinicians, trained to respond quickly to emergency situations regarding medical issues, traumatic injuries and accident scenes. Those clinicians tend to work with the EMS space, which of course stands for Emergency Medical Services.

People call EMS when they have had an accident or are experiencing a medical emergency, including heart attack, difficulty breathing, a fall or accident, drowning, cardiac arrest, stroke, drug overdose or acute illness. As a result, EMS professionals may have to provide basic and/or advanced medical care at the scene of an emergency and en route to a hospital.

Which brings us to the point of this blog post:

Starting and completing EMT-Basic training in North Carolina doesn’t have to be a long, drawn-out exercise. It’s now possible — in just 21 days — to obtain the proper training and knowledge to take and then pass the National Registry and the North Carolina state EMT exam.

Editor’s Note: Our 19-day training has transitioned into a 21-day ‘intensive’ EMT certification course with a unique hybrid component. Keep reading, and then visit the link at the end of this post for the latest info.

The following EMT Training video, which explains the ‘Intensive’ EMT-Basic Training program offered here at The National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education (NCOAE), explains how we do it and why it’s so effective at helping people obtain their EMT credentials:

As you may already know, because we’ve blogged about it before, we are credentialed through the North Carolina Office of Emergency Medical Services department — as well as approved by the State of NC — to offer our one-of-a-kind intensive 21-day EMT-Basic training program.

Classes meet virtually for 11 consecutive days, which include 131 hours of didactic, classroom training. Then, the class meets in person for 10 days, for an additional 61 hours of hands-on training, as well as 48 hours of clinical and