Distance Education In EMS: A Literature Review and Rural/Urban Comparison

摘要

Continuing professional education is valuable and essential to ensuring high quality health care in the prehospital arena. Access to, and availability of, institutional-based Emergency Medical Services (EMS) education programs is limited in rural communities. This places the burden of travel, costs, and time away from family on EMS professionals who have potentially limited resources. Education offered from a distance is seen as one alternative to reducing the burdens and challenges EMS professionals have with accessing initial and continuing education. Unfortunately, very little is known about distance education and continuing education in the EMS profession. We sought to investigate and increase what is known about these issues by undertaking a scientific review of the literature. The primary goal of this literature review was to examine the utilization of different types of distance education resources for fulfilling continuing education requirements in EMS.