County Fire Department Case Study

The County Fire Department is one of the largest departments in Maryland providing fire protection, emergency medical services, as well as other services to over 800,000 citizen. The department is a fire-based EMS system that answers around 130,000 calls a year, with 70% being Emergency Medical Services (EMS) related making EMTs and Paramedics the backbone of the department. There is around 1,100 employees with 20% of those employees being paramedics. The function of a paramedic is to provide advance medical care to critically injured and ill patients who utilize 911. Paramedics possess complex knowledge and skills in order to conduct proper patient assessment, use diagnostic tools, then devise a proper treatment plan while transported the patient to definitive care, the emergency room
Currently, the County Fire Department does not have any internal training on how to treat chest pain calls and interpret electrocardiograms (EKGs), besides the training Paramedics receive in the their schooling or re-certification training to maintain their Paramedic license. After meeting with select individuals, it was proposed to conduct a needs analysis and provide training recommendations to the County Fire Department in order to decrease variances in the acute chest pain algorithm outlined by MIEMSS.
A needs analysis was conducted using extant data, surveys, interviews, and focused groups. The overall goal was to assess the root causes that were contributing to the current state performance, and provide recommendations to reach the desired state to where the County Fire Department wants to be. After completing the analysis, there were two major gaps found in training that was contributing to the lack of performance: generational gaps and employees not being equally