BLS Continuing Education

Wake Tech delivers most Basic Life Support (BLS) Continuing Education (CE) in the county via the Fire Services Training Department, whose calendar may be found here. The EMS Department at Wake Tech offers initial credentialing and refresher classes for Medical Responder, Emergency Medical Technician-Basic, Intermediate, and Paramedic. Questions regarding Wake Tech classes should be addressed to Department Head Wayne Brower, the Fire Services Training department, or Department Head Bart Lineback for EMS department items. Questions regarding recredentialing or Wake County EMS System CE requirements may be addressed to WCEMS Training Chief Don Garner Jr.

For those departments choosing to hold CE classes, the BLS CE topic calendar (available as a link on this page) has been developed to assist you in meeting the Wake EMS System's CE requirements. Any department delivering BLS care in the county may choose whether to follow this calendar; this is merely one way of achieving the necessary hours for recredentialing. If you choose to follow another method, it is up to the department or individual to be certain the instructor is approved by the Wake County EMS System. The required topics and hours are outlined on the recredentialing worksheet for each level (also available as links on this page) and on the topic calendar document. Remember, maintaining your EMS credential is an individual responsibility.

The BLS continuing education topic calendar is designed to allow monthly attendees to achieve all required Wake County EMS System topic hours over the course of a four-year credentialing cycle. Monthly attendance ensures complete CE compliance, with some overages as listed on the document. Attendance on a bimonthly or quarterly basis cannot be certain to meet the necessary topics/hours for recredentialing in the Wake County EMS System. This calendar can be used on a continuous basis, repeating itself every four years.

The topics are split into various segments (i.e., Trauma 1, 2, 3 – Medical 1a, 2b, etc.), with objectives for each segment as defined in the 1996 DOT curriculum. For example, an individual class such as Medical 1c will be 3 hours long. That class should cover Cognitive Objective 3, Affective Objectives 1 & 2, and Psychomotor Objective 3. These objectives may be found in the accompanying DOT EMT Refresher documents listed as links here.

This plan also leaves one month available for department-specific CE or technical scope-of-practice evaluations (TSOPEs), with another month open, again for any additional training the department feels is needed, or you can just take the month off.

Those personnel in need of additional continuing education beyond what is available via Wake Tech's offerings may want to consult the NCOEMS training calendar for other training opportunities.