Oftentimes what makes a career attractive for people is that it is one filled with challenge and excitement and at the same time performs a vital service to the community. Such is the case with the Emergency Medical Technician (EMT). Associate of Science degree programs are available in the field and they are designed to give you a well-rounded education in not just the medical knowledge that an EMT needs to know but the skills to deal with people in emergency situations. Let’s look at what you might learn in a typical EMT associate’s degree program.

An associate’s degree in EMT will probably start out with basic anatomy. An EMT must be able to take instructions from a doctor and will need to know which parts of the body to go to when receiving instructions. When the student has completed associate’s degree courses in this area, he or she should be familiar with the major human body systems, their physiological functioning, and their locations. A simple example of the importance of an EMT understanding the basic physiological functioning of a body is recognizing the color of a person’s blood. If a person is bleeding and the blood is bright red in color, it indicates life-threatening arterial bleeding. If the person’s blood is dark red in color then this indicates venous bleeding (the blood getting carried back to the heart to be enriched with oxygen again). Arterial bleeding is the most serious and in an associate’s degree in EMT program the student will learn to respond to it.

Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) will most definitely be part of your associate’s degree in EMT education. A great majority of emergency situations involve EMTs responding to a call where a person is under cardiac arrest. There are also situations where a person is down because of conditions mimicking cardiac arrest. Your associate’s degree curriculum should help you in making the determination that the patient is suffering a heart attack so that you can administer the right treatment. The first moments after a heart attack are the most critical because of the need to get oxygen to parts of the body.

The ability to communicate with people is crucial in your EMT associate’s degree training. Many EMT curriculums contain courses in psychology and interpersonal communications. Why is this? It is generally-accepted among emergency medical caregivers that a patient will oftentimes be able to pull through a traumatic event if he or she receives reassurance while treatment is being administered. It has the effect of getting the victim to “hang on.”

Your EMT training will introduce you to pre-hospital treatment practices. Your curriculum when studying for your associate’s degree in EMT will more than likely include a class in pre-hospital care strategies. Professionals in the EMT field have to know when to take a victim to the hospital and when not to. This ability to discern between the two actions is important as you don’t want to risk not taking a patient to the hospital if he or she has a life-threatening situation. Conversely, you don’t want to slow down the hospital emergency system by bringing in a patient that could be treated on site.

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