EXCLUSIVES

A First Responder's Guide to Ebola

Dynamic Learning Exercises: Patient Assessment

Thu, Jul 16, 2015

By Dan Limmer, EMT P

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. Limmer Creative would like to offer you four of these dynamic patient assessment exercises to use in your EMT classroom:

A simple, but insightful exercise to help define components of the patient assessment process.
A vital signs trending exercise.
An exercise that strengthens and provides relevance to medical patient assessment.
An exercise that strengthens and provides relevance to trauma patient assessment.

Dan Limmer personally created these exercises for use in his EMT classes. His core belief is 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. Perhaps most importantly, they place the student squarely in the role of “learner.”

We recognize that many educators worry that these “multipliers” take away from lecture time. While we can’t argue how quickly time passes in class, we can assure that doing a bit less lecture and using these dynamic exercises is truly an investment. If you don’t currently use this type of exercise, please give it a try. If you use other active learning methods we hope these will fit into your classroom experience.

Click here to download the Dynamic Learning Exercises - Patient Assessment (PDF).

Dynamic Learning Exercises are provided by Limmer Creative in partnership with JEMS and appear monthly on JEMS.com. Next month's training exercises will focus on Scene Size-Up and Well-Being.

By Dan Limmer, EMT P

Dan Limmer is a paramedic, educator and police officer who has been involved in public safety for more than 35 years. He has authored more than a dozen EMS textbooks including the Emergency Care textbook and is a frequent international conference speaker. He is the Chief Pass-ologist at Limmer Creative, a company he co-founded to publish high quality study and test prep programs.

RECENT ARTICLES

Physicians and EMS Services Must Align Medical Direction Expectations The truth is that there's no golden ratio we can refer to when determining the amount of medical direction needed.
Researchers Analyze the Time Frame for Trauma Transport Is time running out on the "golden hour"?
Teaching Supervisory Skills Through Simulation Learn how you can incorporate the teaching of management skills into EMS training scenarios.
	New Technologies Can Help Take Your QA/QI Program to the Next Level The Total Quality Management system links quality management efforts in the clinical, operations and billing arenas in order to comprehensively improve Richm...
Staying Proficient in Clinical Decision-making and Skills As we advance to paramedic practitioners, we must mirror the standards others have set to prove we're continuing to advance ourselves and maintain an appropr...
	Study Describes Simulation Use, or Lack Thereof, in EMS Education Light is shed on educators' access to simulation and how it isn't always used.