By EMS1 Staff
ANCHORAGE, Alaska — Paramedics from Fairbanks swept every category at a statewide EMS skills Olympic competition last month.
Faculty, students and staff from the Paramedic Academy at University of Alaska Fairbanks Community and Technical College showed their skills in the Alaska EMS Symposium. Students who graduated from the program last summer scored a 100 percent first-time pass rate on the NREMT exam, reported News Miner.
Graduates and current academy students took first place in six categories: overall state paramedic, overall state EMT 2/3, overall state EMT 1, splinting broken bones, oxygen administrator and bleeding control.
The competition brought EMS professionals from across the state to demonstrate their skills, from administering oxygen to splinting broken bones. Trainings, exhibits and discussions were also held at the symposium.
“For the first time, we not only had to be capable of doing the skills well, we also had to do them the fastest,” Kinzea Jones, a recent Fairbanks paramedic graduate, said. She said the program’s high standards and simulation scenarios are what fully prepared her for the competition.
Myles Jellison, a 2012 graduate of the program, won first place in the overall state paramedic category. “I had never competed in any EMS competition before and the experience was great. The EMS field is constantly changing.”