I have a core belief that activities such as these are multipliers in the classroom. They multiply your student’s understanding. They multiply your reach and ability to teach concepts rather than facts. Most importantly, they place the student squarely in the role of “learner”. –Dan Limmer
Teaching EMS Classes
EMS education has evolved dramatically over the past decade. We have education standards rather than a curriculum. Our students have more modalities at their disposal—and they need to think to use them properly. The expectations placed on educators and students have never been greater. To deal with this we find ourselves looking for more efficient ways to spend our class hours.
One of the ways educators have been dealing with these demands is trying more dynamic activities in the classroom. We are reducing our lecture hours and increasing learning-based activities.
Class Activities for EMT, AEMT and Paramedic Students
We have compiled a collection of Dynamic Learning Exercise for EMS classrooms. The learning activities were designed by Chief Knowledge Officer Dan Limmer for use in the EMT classes he teaches.
Each set of exercises includes a student worksheet and instructor notes/answer key. They cover the entire EMT curriculum, but we have a few for ALS programs too. Use them during class or assign them as homework, followed by in-class discussion. Almost all of them can be used for online courses, as well.
Everything is ready for you to download and print. Using these active learning exercises is an investment in both your classroom and your students. We hope you’ll try them out and give us feedback on how they worked.
Preview or Download Dynamic Learning Exercises
You can download 35+ exercises through the educator portal at EMTReview.com. Create a free instructor account, then go to “Dynamic Exercises” in the left side navigation panel. If you want a quick preview, we also have a few published on JEMS.com.
Just a handful of the many exercises you’ll find include:
- Patient Assessment: This package contains four active learning patient assessment exercises for you to use in your classroom. They include:
1. A simple, but an insightful exercise to help define components of the patient assessment process.
2. A vital signs trending exercise.
3. An exercise that strengthens and provides relevance to medical patient assessment.
4. An exercise that strengthens and provides relevance to trauma patient assessment. - Scene Size-up and Well-Being: The scene size-up and well-being exercise is designed to engage students in a discussion about what really harms EMTs—and what those realities are for them as individuals. In addition to being an excellent opener to a lecture or further exercises on the scene size-up, this activity also deals with those elusive affective concepts we often find challenging to teach.
- Medical Emergencies – Altered Mental Status: One of the most challenging patient presentations is altered mental status. The inability of the patient to provide a detailed history, combined with a myriad of possible causes, challenges even the most skilled provider.
- Build the Perfect EMT & Protocols: This exercise is designed to involve students and ask them to think about the qualities they would like in an EMT who comes to their house. Each student will make a list of qualities they value. The discussion you facilitate after each student presents items from their list will create a better lesson than you’d get from slides—and you can fill in any blanks in important traits during the discussion.
These and 35+ other exercises are all available for educators at EMTReview.com.
2020 Update: EMS Class Planning Guide
If you’d like help knowing when and how to use the learning exercises in your lessons, we created a whole curriculum content guide! Organized by subject, the guide outlines free, ready-to-use content you can incorporate into your lessons today. (It also has suggestions for using some of our classroom apps.) Go to curriculum guide.
