2024 rural EMS training - parker county hospital district emergency medical services (pchd EMS) program, designed for 2024-2026, addresses the unique challenges faced by EMS providers in rural…

2024 rural EMS training - parker county hospital district emergency medical services (pchd EMS) program, designed for 2024-2026, addresses the unique challenges faced by EMS providers in rural areas, by enhancing skills and knowledge in mental health and substance abuse emergencies, expanding the EMS workforce, and ensuring comprehensive EMS coverage for the entire population of parker county. This initiative emerges from a comprehensive needs assessment revealing substantial training challenges faced by fire rescue organizations (FRO) within parker county, including parker county emergency service districts (ESD) and weatherford fire department (WFD) due to staffing constraints and limited financial resources. This proposal seeks to unify and refine the standard of care across all agencies by fostering partnerships focused on mental health disorders, substance use disorders (SUD), CO-occurring disorders (COD), and establishing DE-escalation practices. Moreover, this proposal will extend mental health and substance use disorder training to local rural EMS clinic staff, of which are serving the general public for health concerns including prevention and treatment services for patients with CO-occurring disorders. This comprehensive approach addresses training deficits, service gaps and other barriers across rural areas of parker county throughout two award years. The program includes several key goals and objectives: (1) enhance the number of highly trained critical care paramedics in parker county by expanding critical care paramedic (CCP) course offerings to parker county fros and pchd EMS for 20 EMS personnel, focusing on managing critical patients in extended rural transports; (2) increase the total number of EMS providers in the county through scholarship programs for 30 EMT-B high school seniors, 60 for EMT-B for adults, as well as 7 EMT- paramedic students; (3) increase the number of trained EMS in critical incident stress management (CISM) training by 30 students to improve their capabilities in managing stress and mental health crises; (4) providing specialized mental health and stress management training to all telecommunicator agencies, targeting 18 leads and 37 dispatchers, across parker county; (5) implementing comprehensive, evidence-based mental health training for 35 patient-facing staff at pchd rural clinics, to enhance the overall quality of patient care in rural settings. Additionally, our lmsw will provide follow-UPS with individuals having undergone overdose reversal to link individuals to dedicated community partners providing recovery support. This proposal is invested in increasing the number of specialty trained individuals across various initiatives for a total of 237 unduplicated individuals. The program's comprehensive evaluation strategy is designed to confirm the achievement of its goals and to significantly enhance mental health and substance abuse services in rural areas. Through this training, we aim to promote healthy behaviors, and strengthen partnerships, through enhancing the coordination of rural EMS services and therefore improving overall community resilience.