In the most recent article of Circulation, an American Heart Association (AHA) journal, Bhanji et al discuss how best to educate healthcare professionals on the new 2015 American Heart Association Guidelines Update for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care. The article contains a whole section dedicated to teamwork and leadership, skills the AHA consider critical to successful management of a cardiac arrest "...team based skills are different from clinical skills, [therefore] specific team and leadership training may have a role in the effective performance of resuscitation teams and patient outcomes after cardiac arrest."

Effective April 8, 2020

Other updates:

• Patient Care and Transportation Standards - v2.3
• Provincial Equipment Standards for Ontario Ambulance Services - v3.5
• Advanced Life Support Patient Care Standards - v4.7
• Training Bulletin No. 120 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) - v1.5

The Ministry of Health has published a partial revision to the Advanced Life Support Patient Care Standards (ALS PCS) that will come into force on Monday, November 23, 2020.

Advanced Life Support

Patient Care Standards

Version 4.5

Comes into force May 1, 2018

Download v.4.5

For a summary of changes click here

The BLS Patient Care Standards are the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care expectations with respect to how paramedics will interact with their patients.

Go to Medical Directives

Please join me in congratulating Kerry Morris and Gregor Moffat for receiving the prestigious EMS Medal for Exemplary Service. We are extremely proud of Greg and Kerry for dedicating their lives to helping others, and for the great work they do in developing other paramedics to do the same thing. Personally, I am really thankful they have chosen to work with the RPPEO here at TOH.
-Penny Price, Program Director for RPPEO

We are happy to reintroduce to you an online tool, called MedicASK, where you can submit clinical questions. All questions will be reviewed and answered by one of your Medical Directors. Our goal is to answer your question directly within two weeks if you choose to leave your name and email address to follow up. Selected Q&As will be posted on this website for all to view. They will be categorized by topic as well as a tool bar to search by key words. Currently you will find posted our most recent Q&As.

To access MedicASK simply click on the icon below.  No login is required.

MyGriefToolbox.ca helps paramedics respond to palliative care calls and expands their capacity to provide quality care.

The first seven modules provide paramedics with:

• Tactics to support patients and families in acute grief before and after a death.
• Strategies to intervene sensitively.
• Guidance to constructively manage work-related grief and the other stresses of working with people at end of life.
• There is also a module for your friends and family to help them understand and respond to the stresses of your career.
• Your words and actions matter. They significantly impact your patients and their families and have the potential to make a positive (or negative) impact for years to come.

It is Paramedic Services Week and the RPPEO would like to acknowledge and honor the hard work and dedication of the paramedics of Eastern Ontario. Over the past year more has been asked of paramedics than ever before, and you have answered the call. Every day you respond to calls for help from the ill and injured. Each call for service is made by someone who sees or feels a problem they believe they cannot manage on their own, and there is a noble place in history for those who come to help.

Remember when you could bring a page of notes into your math exam? Having all the formulas written out in your teeny-tiny scribble really helped not to forget that r was squared and c was a constant equal to the speed of light.

Now you've got a similar tool integrated into the Ontario Paramedic Clinical Guide.

The new tool isn't for math, though. The Ontario Base Hospital Group put the key highlights for applying the prehospital Canadian Triage and Acuity Score (CTAS) to your adult patients into graphic form.