National Registry Paramedic – EMT Training
Once a candidate completes their paramedic education at a program accredited by CAAHEP (Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Educations), they become eligible for the NREMT exam. A National Registry Paramedic candidate must successfully complete both the Cognitive and Psychomotor exams to become eligible for the NREMT’s National EMS Certification at the paramedic level.
If you don’t know whether you want to become a paramedic or an EMT, check out EMT vs. Paramedic for more information on each career.
This page will focus primarily on the National Registry of EMT Paramedic exams, however there have been some significant changes to Paramedic schooling programs and Psychomotor testing in August 2016 which will also be discussed.
PARAMEDIC PORTFOLIO
All candidates that begin a Paramedic program after August 1 2016 are required to complete a paramedic portfolio that will become a part of their permanent education file.
You may be asking:
What is a paramedic portfolio?
Basically a paramedic portfolio is documented evidenced of how a student performed throughout their paramedic school program. It can be physical – with papers in a binder (Paramedic skill sheets, clinical sheets, etc) or it can be an electronic online paramedic portfolio.
The portfolio is a collection of evidence that shows the progress a student made throughout their training and it can be presented if the National Registry audits the EMS professional.
Some vital things that will be included in the paramedic portfolio are records of successful completion of the 33 required Paramedic skill sheets, Scenario Lab Forms, Clinical Evaluation Forms, and Capstone Field Shift Evaluation Worksheets.
The paramedic portfolio shows competency in emergency medical skills which means the National Registry paramedic psychomotor exam no longer needs to test candidates on 12 basic skills like in the past. Here is some information about the required paramedic portfolio forms.
The Scenario Lab forms document 20 successful performances in both the team member and team leader roles. (These patient contacts must involve any of the 15 Scenario Topic Areas.)
Ten of these will be successful team member evaluations and ten will be team leader evaluations.
In the team leader role the candidate will be required to complete:
→ Four successful adult patient leads.
→ Three successful pediatric patient leads.
→ Three successful geriatric patient leads.
Once a student demonstrates acceptable performance in any Scenario Lab topic area, the student is permitted to move on to the related clinical area. At this point a Clinical Shift Evaluation Worksheet must be completed by the Clinical Preceptor for each of the candidate’s clinical rotations.
Once these skills are completed in a clinical setting the candidate can move on to the Team Leader position at the Capstone Field Internship.
At this point Field Shift Evaluation Worksheets will be completed by the Field Preceptor for each of the candidate’s field rotation.
To clarify, during the Capstone field internship the candidate is a team leader in field and supervised by a clinician that is at least at a paramedic skill level.
The Candidate acts as team leader running all the calls and the preceptor only steps in to avoid patient safety issues, etc.
The patient contacts during this field internship will take place on an Advanced Life Support (ALS) Unit responding to critical and emergent patients (911 calls).
In order to successfully complete the field internship, the candidate will need to succeed in 18 of the last 20 patient contact evaluations.
The calls getting evaluated can be BLS (Basic Life Support) or ALS, because it can be difficult to get 20 ALS calls in a row. (“Successful” will be defined as a score of “2” in the Team Leadership category of the Capstone Field Internship Evaluation Worksheet).
National Registry Paramedic – Cognitive
The National Registry of EMT exam for the Paramedic level is a written Paramedic test that will have from 80 to 150 questions. There are 20 pilot questions in the paramedic exam that are being tested for future exams and do not count towards your final score.
The NREMT Paramedic (NRP) cognitive exam will cost $125 per testing attempt and the candidate will have up to 2 hours and 30 minutes to complete the paramedic test.
The NREMT Paramedic test is a written exam, but it is administered via computer using computer adaptive testing (CAT), which is discussed in detail below.
The cognitive portion of the NREMT exam for the Paramedic is constructed to administer test questions from 5 areas of content. The content categories are Trauma, EMS Operations, Airway; Respiration and Ventilation, Cardiology an Resuscitation, and Medical; Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Within these content areas, any questions related to patient care will pertain to 85% adult and elderly and 15% pediatric patients.
The goal of the National Registry Paramedic exam is to determine whether candidates possess the complex knowledge and skills needed provide patient care at a competent level. The paramedic tests need to assess whether candidates can successfully apply book learning and course knowledge to field experience while they provide safe patient care.
The paramedic test is designed to create situations and tasks an advanced EMS professional will need to respond to once on duty.
Wrong answers on the paramedic exam may reflect wrong decisions in the field that can lead to incorrect assessment or treatment of patients in the field.
The paramedic cognitive exam is organized using a test plan approved by the National Registry of EMT Board. The test plan is a blue-print that communicates with the computer testing software and instructs it on how to build each candidate’s exam.