Over the next seven to eight weeks, I will be updating the online EMS 3300 course for Idaho State University’s (ISU) Fall 2025 semester. I am asking for your help with some of the content. If you could review what I have and, if appropriate, share a better or more up-to-date resource. There is no compensation beyond acknowledgment of your assistance in the course presentation
ISU is using a different learning management system starting in Fall 2025. Concurrently, the university approved new course descriptions for EMS 3300: Foundations of EMS Systems and FSA/EMS 3335: Management of Emergency Medical Systems. I plan to include many NFPA Standard 1020 (2025) EMS Officer I and II Job Performance Requirements (JPRs) and meet the spirit of the National Fire Academy FESHE “Foundations of EMS Systems” (2019) model course outline.
Who Are The Students?
The ISU students are 60% traditional undergraduates, full-time students in their late teens and early 20s, completing their initial paramedic training. The rest of the students are early to mid-career West Coast practitioners finishing their online bachelor’s degree. Both 3300 and 3335 are upper-division undergraduate courses.
EMS 3300 Course Description
This course provides an overview of high-performance Emergency Medical Services systems by analyzing organizational structures, EMS staffing, and ambulance deployment practices. Topics include medical regulation, financing, fleet management, and workforce retention.
Course objectives:
- Describe the structure of Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in the United States.
- Apply the benchmarking elements of a High-Performance EMS system.
- Examine clinically significant ambulance response time.
- Allocate ambulance resources based on dynamic deployment principles.
- Describe EMS funding sources.
- Analyze an existing ambulance fleet to develop a replacement schedule.
- Characterize the expanding role of paramedics in out-of-hospital care.
Lectures
Course Structure
ISU requires a LIVE online face-to-face Zoom session each week. Each course includes a simulation that allows the application of the learning objective through Small Group Activities that report out in a LIVE session, and individual graded Assignments. For EMS 3300, it is a response to a River County request for proposal, followed by establishing BengalCare Mobile Health services.
Each LIVE session consists of a Small Group Report out, a lecture, and an introduction to that week’s readings and assignments. We are not using a textbook with this update, so I need to increase the weekly content. The four quizzes cover the material presented in the lectures.
The mid-term and final exam are open-book short-answer responses to simulation scenarios that cover the learning objectives. There is a research paper requirement.
BengalCare Mobile Health versus Wombat Fire Department simulations.
EMS 3300 provides the “big picture” of EMS using a request for proposal and creation of a commercial 9-1-1 and interfacility ambulance service to apply the concepts – including scheduling and fleet issues. The student role plays as the BengalCare Operations Manager.
Both EMS and Fire Service students take FSA/EMS 3335, it is focused on the day-to-day management of an overworked fire-based EMS service, including Just Culture and first-line supervisor development. The student role plays as a Captain assigned to the EMS Chief’s office.
1: Introduction to EMS Systems
Brief description of urban and suburban/rural ambulance services before 1966. Ask students to read “Three Bells and a Jingle” an August 16, 1930 The New Yorker magazine interview with a Manhattan hospital ambulance surgeon.
Modern EMS starts in 1966 from three activities:
- Federal funding to establish a system to reduce motor vehicle traumatic fatalities
- Medical research on out-of-hospital cardiac arrest survival
- President Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” funded a Black-owned ambulance service for the Hill and Oakland communities in Pittsburgh in 1967
Briefly describe all three activities. Point out that the Freedom House paramedics were the first caregivers to deliver ALS care on the streets without direct supervision by a physician or nurse (June 15, 1968). The initial EMT-Paramedic National Standard Curriculum came from the University of Pittsburgh/Dr. Nancy Caroline.
Have students read Edwards, M.L. (2019) Pittsburgh’s Freedom House Ambulance Service: The Origins of Emergency Medical Services and the Politics of Race and Health. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences. (74)4, 440-466.
Finally, I had the students watch Hodgkins (2013) “Ambulance Service of Manchester – Episode 1 – Introduction” (2:29 minutes). This is a regional 9-1-1 and interfacility ambulance service that is similar to what BengalCare Mobile Health will be. It is no longer available. Is there a newer video that provides the same service overview?
You can post your responses in the comments section or email michaelward@isu.edu
Over half of the first lecture is spent discussing the mechanics of how to get an “A” in this course and walking them through the River County Request for Proposal. The first Small Group Exercise is for each group to read the RFP and generate three questions about the RFP before we submit a proposal.
Next week we will look at two later lectures.
Feature picture: Maury EMS at Maury County Regional Health Center. Columbia, TN. Devin Dickey picture.