Manitoba Paramedic Professionals: Ready for Anything
In a medical emergency, skills matter. And a trained, professional paramedic can make a life-and-death difference.
Manitoba’s ambulance paramedic professionals have the skills and training to deliver the urgent care you need on the spot and en route to hospital. Their expertise is the beginning of your journey to a successful recovery.
And now they’re joined by community paramedics, who provide advanced medical assessments and non-emergency care to people in their own homes and elsewhere in the community.
Did you know...
- On any given day, a paramedic professional responds to as many as eight calls — and no two are the same. They could involve anything from treating the injuries of a domestic violence victim, to giving timely interventions in a mental health crisis, to providing crucial life saving treatments for a cardiac arrest.
- Depending on training, paramedics can perform a variety of advanced, life-saving treatments. Like a chest decompression: a precise puncture in the chest wall that can let a collapsed lung recover. Or a cricothyrotomy: an incision in the throat to open an airway and allow a patient to breathe again. They can even deliver crucial medication and fluids directly into a patient's bone marrow, through intraosseous infusion.
- Training is an essential part of being a paramedic. A primary care paramedic completes an intensive year-long program. Becoming an advanced care paramedic requires two more years of rigorous training. And all paramedics continuously update their skills throughout their career.
- Community paramedicine is an innovative way to deliver health care. It lets paramedics use their training and expertise in community-based, non-emergency care roles. For instance, at the Main Street Project in Winnipeg, specially trained community paramedics work with habitual 911 callers to help people receive the care they need. They're saving lives, while saving healthcare dollars by reducing the need for expensive ambulance transports by as much as 60%.
- A paramedic's bag contains over two hundred supplies, instruments, and medications — from a chest decompression kit to a bone gun. And an ambulance contains even more equipment (such as a defibrillator/cardiac monitor, traction splints and IVs) to help paramedics stabilize patients and save lives.
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The Next Stage: More skills for Paramedics. Better care for you.
Paramedics are a crucial part of health care. That's why several other Canadian provinces recognize paramedicine as a health profession, with its own self-governing regulatory body.
Self-regulation for Manitoba paramedics would follow the same approach used by other health professionals, like doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. It would ensure you can count on consistent standards of practice and care no matter where you live. And it recognizes that members of a profession, with their experience and judgment, can do the best possible job of governing it.
With self-regulation, Manitoba paramedic professionals will be able to:
- deliver their full scope of practice — their complete range of skills — and use them throughout the province (as opposed to having the skills they can perform limited by the region they work in);
- provide more accountability by creating a consistent, publicly transparent body to deal with concerns and other issues;
- expand their skills and knowledge to offer even better care when you need it most; and
- deliver better value for Manitobans' health care dollars.
Learn more about what paramedic self-regulation means for Manitobans.
Self-regulation will allow paramedic professionals to adopt new advancements in paramedic care – quickly and safely. It will mean paramedics throughout Manitoba can deliver the same rigorous standard of care. And it will provide better public accountability.