Possible Entry Requirements

The following list includes all the possible requirements that any college might ask from your for application to a paramedic-to-RN program admission:

1. Graduated from an Accredited College or University: Most colleges will not accept your paramedic degree if it is not from an accredited college. The goal of accreditation is to ensure that education provided by institutions of higher education meets acceptable levels of quality.
2. License or Certification: Paramedics must have a current license or certification and have a high school diploma to enter an accredited paramedic-to-RN program. While each state has criteria for paramedics, the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians provides the entry requirements as well as application and/or certification process.
3. 2.5 GPA or Greater: Some paramedic-to-RN programs require students to have a minimum GPA of 2.5 from their paramedic training. Use this calculator to determine your Grade Point Average. Your grade point average (GPA) is calculated by dividing the total amount of grade points earned by the total amount of credit hours attempted.
4. Submit a Copy of ACT Scores: You can have your ACT scores sent to other colleges and scholarship agencies after you test in addition to the ones you selected when you registered or tested.
5. Submit High School Transcript: The ability to obtain your high school transcript has become easier. Follow this link to learn how complete instructions from another student on how to complete the process.
6. Fill Out a FAFSA: Submit an application for federal student aid, a form that submits your information for various college grants and scholarships.

Class Emphasis

Paramedic-to-RN courses offer studies in physical and life sciences, patient care concepts and health care systems and processes. If you want to get up to speed on various topics, you can do so through OpenCourseWare, free online classes that don’t offer credits, but that prove invaluable for learning a subject easily. Most of the courses listed below may be required by your paramedic-to-RN course, but under different names and possibly with a slightly different focus.

7. Anatomy: Use this site to study various aspects of anatomy, including skeletal, digestive muscular, lymphatic, endocrine, nervous, cardiovascular and urinary systems as well as male and female reproductive systems.
8. Quantitative Physiology: Organ Transport Systems: This MIT course elaborates on the application of the principles of energy and mass flow to major human organ systems. It also discusses anatomical, physiological, and pathophysiological features of the cardiovascular, respiratory, and renal systems.
9. Utilization of Nursing Research in Advanced Practice: This Open.Michigan course promotes an evidence-based approach to advanced nursing practice. Evidenced-based research findings for nursing practice will be evaluated in terms of racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic relevance.
10. Quality Oversight in the Health Care Marketplace: This Tufts course describes how concerns about quality are impacting the health care system. The goal of this module is to present practitioners with information, strategies and tools to manage and provide high quality and cost-effective care for patients.
11. Microbiology: This Tufts course introduces students to the principles of infectious agents. With an emphasis on pathobiology, lecturers chosen for their expertise and speaking ability cover a wide range of topics from streptococcus to fastidious bacteria.
12. Human Development Across the Lifespan: This Dixie State College of Utah course is devoted to the study and understanding of constancy and change for human beings, male and female, in the physical, cognitive, social and emotional domains interpreted through a variety of theoretical frameworks, contexts, and interdisciplinary research.
13. Seminar on Health Care Systems Innovation: MIT provides this seminar with a systems perspective to understand health care delivery today, its stakeholders and problems as well as opportunities. Students are introduced to the ‘systems perspective’ that has been used successfully in other industries, and will address the introduction of new processes, technologies and strategies to improve overall health outcomes.
14. Child and Maternal Health Care: The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH) offers a number of courses that deal with health across the lifespan, infant mortality, reproductive epidemiology and family planning.
15. Nutrition and Health: Again, JHSPH provides a number of open topics on nutrition from urban food environments to food and nutrition policy and obesity economics.
16. Ethical Issues in Public Health: JHSPH provides lectures and small group discussions that focus on ethical theory and current ethical issues in public health and health policy, including resource allocation, the use of summary measures of health, the right to health care, and conflicts between autonomy and health promotion efforts.

NCLEX-RN Tips

The following sites explain the NCLEX-RN as well as offer tips and study help.

17. NCLEX: This Wikipedia entry explains the National Council Licensure Examination-Registered Nurse exam for licensing of nurses in the U.S. Most of the questions of the NCLEX-RN exam are worded multiple choice questions. In recent years, however, the Boards of Nursing have added broader questions that don’t involve multiple choice.
18. NCLEX Examinations: As you focus in on NCLEX preparation, you’ll also want to prepare to successfully navigate the examination process. You can increase confidence and reduce test anxiety by being fully prepared for the test experience through the help provided by this National Council of State Boards of Nursing site.
19. NCLEX Study Guide: This site explains how the NCLEX-RN test works, and offers a free study guide for download. The site also provides a test study guide and five sets of practice questions.
20. NCLEX Test Review: This Web site was created to help students overcome the challenge of the NCLEX questions. Hopefully you can avoid mistakes others have made when preparing for the NCLEX and will find the following information to be helpful and informative on dealing with the NCLEX test.

Emergency rooms are critical to the American health care system, since they are often the only place that patients can get immediate care for true emergencies. But, for many reasons, they are often used for purposes other than for what they are intended. Here are 20 facts about emergency rooms you may not know.

1. Emergency room visits increased by 26 percent from 1993 to 2003.
2. During that same period, the number of emergency rooms declined by 425, and the number of hospital beds declined by 198,000.
3. About 15.6 percent of the visits to the emergency rooms are for general symptoms like pain and fever.
4. Musculoskeletal symptoms, such as bone breaks and fractures along with muscle sprains accounted for 13.7 percent of emergency room visits.
5. Each year, hospital acquired infections kill about 90,000 patients, so the hospital isn’t necessarily the place you want to visit if you don’t have to. This figure is up 36% since 1980. The rise is attributed to the creation of more antibiotic resistant bacteria.
6. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, the average emergency room visit costs about $400, while the average doctor visit costs about $60, according to the American Medical Association.
7. Children make up 27 percent of all emergency room visits, but only 6% of US emergency rooms have all of the necessary supplies for pediatric emergencies.
8. Between 1993 and 2003, 1.7 million visits to the emergency room were for adverse effects from other medical treatment.
9. Overall, patients spend an average of 3.2 hours on each visit to an emergency room.
10. The average wait time to see a doctor in an emergency room is 46 minutes. In 2007, 18% of patients were seen in 15 minutes or less.
11. In 2007, there were 116.8 million visits to emergency rooms in the US.
12. In 2007, 12.5% of patients who visited the emergency room were admitted to the hospital.
13. Medicaid beneficiaries go to emergency rooms more often than others, according to a report by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta. Their report shows that 15% of Medicaid beneficiaries under 65 had two or more ER visits, compared with 7% of the uninsured and 5% of people with private insurance.
14. Residents of the District of Columbia visit the emergency room more than residents of any state. Among the states, people in West Virginia visit the emergency room the most and people in California visit it the least.
15. In 2006, there were 1,742,887 drug-related emergency room visits nationwide.
16. 31 percent of these visits involved illicit drugs only.
17. 7% of these visits involved minors and alcohol.
18. Overall, 33% of drug related visits to the emergency room
    involve alcohol (sometimes in combination with other drugs).
19. The single most common illicit drug use that results in emergency room visits is cocaine.
20. The most common type of prescription drug whose use result in emergency room visits are the drugs in the opioid category, specifically: hydrocodone, oxycodone, and methadone.

As you can see, emergency room visits are on the rise, and the reasons for this are varied. In many cases, their physicians could just as easily have treated these patients during office hours, reducing costs and inconvenience, as well as making the emergency rooms more efficient for those patients who have true emergencies.

Only time will tell if healthcare reform will reduce the crowding in our emergency rooms, helping reduce costs and inconvenience for everyone involved.

It is certain, however, that demands for services from emergency rooms has been on the rise for years, even as many services have been reduced.

Keep abreast of the information provided each year by the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta and from the Center for Health Statistics in Maryland to stay on top of what’s happening in our nation’s emergency rooms each year.

U.S. Paramedic Blogs

1. 510 Medic: This blogger has been working in EMS for nearly 10 years, the past 6 as a paramedic.
2. 9-ECHO-1: “Son to my mother, husband to my wife, father to my kids, and paramedic to the masses.”
3. A Day in the Life of an Ambulance Driver: By day he is a mild-mannered paramedic, writer and educator. At night…
4. Burned-Out Medic: This blogger is a paramedic in a large urban area with a significant indigent population.
5. Confessions of a Baby Medic: A brand-new paramedic is thrilled with this career and writing about it.
6. Drug-Induced Hallucinations: A paramedic writes about his job and all the tips and tidbits you might expect from this exciting profession.
7. Life Under the Lights: This active paramedic is a social media addict.
8. Looking Through A Pair Of Pink Handled Trauma Shears: This blogger has been in the field for almost nine years; six as an EMT-Basic and 3 as a paramedic.
9. MaddogMedic: This blog represents the “life and times of a come-lately paramedic.”
10. Minimedic’s Blog: This part-time paramedic is an Army officer wife and a blogger.
11. My Variables Only Have 6 Letters: Software engineer by day, paramedic by day too, and nights, and weekends…
12. Paramedic Pulp Fiction: This blogger hopes to present vignettes of the life to which a Paramedic bears witness.
13. Paramedic (Ultra)-Marathoner: This paramedic started running in 2006 after winning a Biggest Loser Program, then he turned his attention to want to run a 10k.
14. Pedro the Paramedic: Pedro is an urban paramedic with a passion for his job.
15. Pink, Warm and Dry: This mom who cusses and has a hard time sleeping is passionate about her paramedic career.
16. Rescue Monkey: This blogger chronicles life on the streets as a paramedic.
17. Street Watch: These paramedic’s notes are a diary of his job and scene calls.
18. The MacMedic: A diary of a paramedic who has been in this career for 30 years.

Area-Specific U.S. Paramedic Blogs

19. BurningTiger – Reborn! Observations by a “humble paramedic” about EMS and daily New Orleans life.
20. Firefighter/Paramedic Stories: These are some of the stories, experiences and ramblings of a firefighter/paramedic working in California.
21. Gomerville: Buckman is a paramedic and an organ donor coordinator working in the “wilds of Kentucky.”
22. Life in Manch Vegas: Walt is a husband, father and paramedic. Oh, yes — he’s also a musician, a computer geek, a clown and a former marine…
23. medicTHREE: A 26-year-old husband, father and paramedic in the upper Midwest plies his trade in a city of about 170,000 people.
24. MsParamedic: This blogger is a small town Southern girl and paramedic for a small private service.
25. Prehospital 12-Lead ECG: Tom Bouthillet is a Fire Lieutenant / Paramedic with Hilton Head Island Fire & Rescue (Hilton Head Island, SC) where he has served since August of 1997.
26. Rescuing Providence: Michael Morse started this Blog in 2006, thinking people would be interested in learning what happens inside an advanced life support vehicle in Providence, RI.
27. Scenes from the Ambulance: A paramedic in the 911 system in Alameda County, CA writes about his job.
28. The Happy Medic: The Happy Medic is an active duty Firefighter/Paramedic with one of the nation’s busiest fire departments in San Francisco, California.
29. Too Old To Work, Too Young To Retire: This blog is all about paramedicine, guns, politics and “a little Country Western Music,” from a paramedic working in “a largish city in the Northeast corner of the U.S.”

Paramedic Blogs Outside the U.S.

30. ER24: ER24 EMS (Pty) Ltd. Is a private, national, emergency medical care service, committed to providing South Africans with efficient, effective emergency response and pre-hospital care.
31. Insomniac Medic: A paramedic working for the London Ambulance Service writes this blog about “ambulance related stuff.”
32. Licensed to Ill: A German paramedic and fire/EMS dispatcher tells magnificent EMS tales.
33. Life in the Fast Lane: This blog is by Australasian emergency physicians and intensivists “exploring the changing world of eLearning, emergency medicine, critical care and toxicology through clinical cases, fictionalized anecdotes and medical satire.”
34. Medic 999: This 30-something operation Paramedic Team Leader in the UK has been a paramedic for the past 10 years and, prior to that, he was a Registered Nurse.
35. Ontario Medic: OntarioMedic is a place to find news, training, events, stories of paramedics in action and all things paramedic in Ontario, Canada.
36. Ramblings of a Tassie Paramedic: An ambulance paramedic writes about trauma in Tasmania.
37. Random Acts of Reality: This paramedic is trying to “kill as few people as possible” as a London paramedic.
38. Siren Voices: This blog is a record of some of the people and situations that I come across in this blogger’s role as EMT with an ambulance service in the UK.
39. The Paramedic’s Diary: This blog is a record of the working life of a London ambulance paramedic.
40. Trauma Queen: Kal is a paramedic located in Edinburgh…he has “horrible stories, brilliantly written.”

Paramedic Student and Learning Blogs

41. Fit Responder: Written by Bryan Fass, the Fit Responder Program is designed to identify and correct the rigors of a career in public safety.
42. Flobach Republic: This student paramedic writes about the routine in Western Australia.
43. GrantLifeLink Blog: News from the EMS department at Grant Medical Center in Ohio. The department provides clinical, educational and operational resources for EMS professionals.
44. Medic 22: This blogger works on a BLS transport unit and is a full-time paramedic student.
45. MedicDude’s Paramedic Blog: Information about paramedic and the NREMT paramedic exam.
46. My Paramedic Blog: The personal notes of a blogger on the road to becoming a paramedic.
47. On The Clock: On the Clock is a semi-autobiographical fiction written by a 21 year old EMT/nursing student from the great state of Virginia.
48. Paramedic Blog: Dan White, a paramedic since 1977 and an instructor since 1981, writes for paramedics rather than about them.
49. Paramedic Spot: A blog that outlines EMS history and training.
50. Student Paramedic: A 51-year-old married man studying to be a paramedic writes this blog.

Paramedics thrive on the adrenaline rush that comes from having to get to an emergency quickly and from saving a life.They often form a strong bond with the people they work with, likely because of the stress they endure together and the heart wrenching scenes they sometimes witness. A big part of surviving the emotional stress of being a paramedic is having the support of others in your field, because they understand exactly what you’re going through. If you’re new to the paramedic field, you might really enjoy keeping up with others who share your passion for lifesaving. This kind of connection can really be valuable, even if you don’t actually meet some of these paramedics in person. Some are very experienced in their field, while others are tweeting about their experiences learning their new job in the classroom and in the ambulance. Here are 19 paramedics on Twitter we think you’ll want to follow.

1. Paramedic Daily: These paramedics in Palm Beach County Florida will keep you informed about their daily life saving activities.
2. Sunstar EMS: Sunstar EMS is located in Pinellas County Florida.
3. Stay Alive Paramedics: Stay Alive Paramedics are located in Victoria Australia.
4. Pedro the Paramedic: Funny name, but some serious stuff here. We’re not sure where he’s from, but he tweets a lot.
5. Paramedic Intern: This Twitter page is actually a journal by a paramedic intern. Follow his journey through learning this tough and rewarding job.
6. Uni Paramedic: This is another student paramedic training in London with the London Ambulance Service.
7. Parameditutor: This Tweeter teaches paramedic classes in London.
8. Ugly Paramedic: Musings and ramblings of a paramedic. Some of his tweets are humorous, some are random, but some get to the heart of being a paramedic.
9. Student Paramedic: Another paramedic student from London chronicles his education and experience.
10. NREMT Paramedic: Follow this paramedic on his journeys to saving lives.
11. Paramedic Emma: Female paramedic in Leeds England.
12. TPA News: This Twitter page is for the Toronto Paramedics News. Keep up with what’s going on by following them.
13. Essential EMS: This is another EMS and Paramedic News twitter site from Valencia California.
14. Paramedic Association: Follow the Paramedic news from the Paramedics Association Ontario Canada.
15. The Back of an Ambo: This paramedic tweets about patient experiences, and will give you great reason to celebrate right along with him when he saves a life.
16. EMT Paramedics: This twitter account gives you information from one of the best paramedic study guides you can find. This is a great one to check out when you’re studying for your paramedic exam.
17. NY Paramedic: Follow the adventures in life saving of this paramedic living in New York City.
18. Yorkshire Medic: Another paramedic worth a follow.
19. Paramedic Reference: Check out this site for a paramedic reference book that is very popular with US paramedics.

Paramedics are a special breed. Not everyone can live with the stress and tension that comes in emergency situations. Those who are really good at it, however, actually thrive on this stress. Keep up with the news of your field and connect with people doing the job that you love by following other paramedics on Twitter.

• Choose Career according to Your Passions: Whether, you are going into a medic career of any specialty and range, you should always keep in your mind whether that particular medical profession suits to your aptitude and taste and that anyway would be appreciable enough to keep you happy for next 30 to Forty years. In case you are interested into a field related to skin care then dermatology is the career that you should always look towards at with passion and love.  A lack of interest and passion in a specialty even can take you towards situations like boredom, depression, etc that finally would be suffered by your patient.
• Range of Salary and depending lifestyle: The next important thing that you should there consider and think about while selecting a medial career is that after completing the medical career in the field of your specialty and career wise can help you to grow in life, as well as status wise.
• Job Requirements: Contrary to common belief the career into medical field necessarily not needs have a Monday through Friday, job positions. There are certain fields where a medical professional need to work through for Monday through Friday positions. There many physicians are expected to work for long and rotating shifts. So when you select any medical career then you should be wise enough to take all the things in your mind that, what that career would need from you as a job requirement.
• Be focused towards your interests: In case you have selected a specific career of your choice and opportunities in medical career especially like cardiology then you should sincere should always focus towards that particular career option.     You should certainly be devoted and inclined towards that goal of your life. You should be concentrated only towards hands on training. Do  also discuss with other students too what they feel about a specific career and opportunity
• Location: Next important point about your choice of Medical career is whether you wish to relocate for a post and position all together. Mostly choosing a re-locatable career option helps you to develop and grow in most friendlier and acceptable manner. Do also check out whether internship is provided at your center or college. Internship not only gives a practical knowledge of working environment but also helps you by providing reference for the job.
• Career Placement Options: The next important thing for going a career is that the institute where you are taking admission is capable of providing you an affordable and helpful job placement as appropriate and suitable to your choice. A career placement department helps in getting job at right place and according to your choice and at scale of your salary expectation.

1. Global Atlas: This is an application provided by WHO’s Communicable Disease Global Atlas for analysis and comparison of standardized data and statistics for various infectious diseases at country, regional and global levels. On and over it data is further supported from information on demography, socioeconomic conditions and environmental factors. In doing so Atlas with an alteration takes pattern of various infectious diseases transmission.
2. Optimism Apps: The Company sold out software and online applications to mental health officials around 50 countries around all over continents. The applications are now being deployed in co-branded and fully-branded forms, to organizations in North America, Europe and South East Asia.
3. Ample Blood Project: This app is a fully working diagnostic assistant that can take clinical, blood values and output a likely diagnosis. It also describes tests, compare them against each other and describe diseases.  The use of this application exists with medical students, remote areas where it is difficult to reach a doctor.
4. EGADSS: It is an open source tool which is designed to work in conjunction with primary care Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems to provide patient specific point of care reminders to aid physicians to provide high quality care. It is developed as stand alone system which responses to requests from existing Electronic Medical Records such as Wolf, Med Access, and MedOff is to provide patient specific clinical guidance based on its internal collection of guidelines
5. iStretch:  This app is consisted of a series of the office yoga exercises as precisely carved out to stretch muscles that become stiff due to immobility or repetitive movement of the body like excessive typing or having a mouse use.  Only five minutes with iStretch every day you one can get himself relived of back pain, neck stiffness, shoulder tension as well as wrist, arm and leg soreness. With the help of this application you would able to burn out fat, having increase in blood flow, alleviate headaches and reduce stress.
6. Calorie Counter: The most appalling fact to efforts of weight loss is allure of good food. This application helps to resist effects of too fried, mayonnaise drenched and delicious snacks. This particular application serves data from about 9,000 items from nearly 72 fast food restaurants. This data include calories, fat grams, fiber, carbs and protein.

Since it is a life sacrificing vocation, it brings out a great difference on the lives of those attended to. In order for you to get to greener pastures as a paramedic, it is important for you to become a registered nurse. This way, you will be exposed in the nursing field and builder a better rapport with your profession. Most of the paramedics who have gone places are those that trained as registered nurses. It is a profession that demands for hospitable and caring hands.

If you have a passion for helping people in need and at the same time need a rewarding career, then this is a very good career choice. The average salary of a Paramedic is approximately $38,000 per annum. However, it depends on the persons resume and their number of years of experience. The frequency (in hours) at which a paramedic works in a week ranges between forty five and 60 hours.

In contrast, the starting salary of an RN sums up to an average of $55,000 per annum .In addition to that, their working hours are highly predictable. As former paramedics become qualified RNS, they look forward to easier working conditions and better schedules. Paramedics deal with difficult critical and tragic cases like murder injuries, road accidents, and gun shots and so on.

As much as the RN and Paramedic professions are a bit similar, the Registered Nursing profession is quite better. The advantage is that once you become a Registered Health Nurse, you will get used to the working conditions with time. With the RN job, you nurses tend to have a stressful period which is in turn very rewarding. Since there are numerous nursing job opportunities, there is an increasing popularity of the Paramedic to RN programs. The main disadvantage about working as a paramedic is that one may not be in a position to pursue further studies. This is because there is barely any time to take part time classes.