EMS Dinosaurs

This morning a friend of mine told me he was headed over to a local college to do EMT testing and the his assignment was long backboard and spinal immobilization testing.

I found this funny because for years we’ve known that the routine immobilization of the spinal column by EMS has more dangers involved with it than positives in terms of preventing cervical spine injury.  It makes me wonder when the National Registry of EMTs will remove this testing station from their catalog of assessments?

While routine spinal mobilization was likely important 30 years ago when National Registry was formed, it has obviously fallen out of favor when you consider the NEXUS study and other data points that show in general we don’t need to be performing spinal mobilization.  Additionally, EMS generally considers this a low risk event because when we do spinally immobilize, we do it poorly.

It is interesting to me that we are teaching the EMS pops a skilled and belongs to the EMS dinosaurs.