The Importance of a Solid Foundation

Here is another guest post by my colleague James. This is an excellent piece on the importance of approaching scenarios in a cohesive, standardised manner that still allows some flexibility. Emergency medicine is actually based on some pretty simple concepts as James discusses.

As an ALS clinical instructor who also dabbles in teaching at university, the one single concept I harangue all my students with is the idea of having a good clinical approach. Teaching many students in one form or another has shown me that this is the single most useful thing that anyone can learn in paramedicine. Unfortunately it’s one of the most unevenly applied and its importance is poorly understood. So today I want to try to get across why it’s critical that the student paramedic gets this straight in their head.