Per the accrediting body and effective immediately, advanced students (AEMT or Paramedic) may NOT use the Rotation Simulation Labs under the Alternative Rotations Policy during the pandemic to meet all of the pediatric required assessments requirements for Newborn 2, Infant 2, Toddler 2, Preschool 2, School Age 2 and Adolescent 2. These assessments MUST be completed on LIVE children, not on manikins. That doesn’t mean they have to be on real “PATIENTS”. It means that during your rotations, you and your preceptors should seek out or create “cases” where you are contacting real children of those age groups and the preceptor can give you a “condition” and then verify that you do an appropriate assessment on the child. You should document it as a “patient” in Platinum. The issue is that the American Academy of Pediatrics, who has 2 Board Members who sit on the Board for the accrediting committee, are DEMANDING that the pediatric assessments be on live children to ensure that prehospital personnel have at least been able to interact with and assess “normal” – vital signs, pulse oximetry, ECG if indicated, and being able to converse and deal with these age groups appropriately.
There are ways you can help us with this. If you can get a local pediatrician’s office or pediatric medical facility to sign with us as a rotation affiliate and complete the census and preceptor orientation pieces, we can send students there. But we need your help getting into these sites and getting them set up. If you only lack a few of these contacts and have friends or family members who can come to the Rotation Sim Lab with you long enough for the instructor there to do these cases, that is fine too – just coordinate with the Program Director and the Lab Instructor. Or you can pull more hours and ask your preceptors during your rotations to help you with this issue – explain what you and they can do and ask for their help. Most will have some ideas.
Whatever the case, due to the pandemic, this has been a very difficult group of patients to get access to for you and students in many many other programs. So we can be creative and work with you and your preceptors but coordinate with the Clinical Coordinator. Open communication and requests for approval for individual situations by her is appropriate.