What is EMS?
The idea of providing emergency medical care to sick or injured people in a pre-hospital setting is a relatively new one. Mortuaries and funeral homes provided the first pre-hospital emergency care in the form of transport only. The patients received no treatments or care, only transport. The first major changes in the Emergency Medical Services (EMS), as it has become known, came in the Vietnam War. It was the combat physicians who noticed that the care soldiers received in the field often saved their lives. This care was provided by corpsman who were trained to provide lifesaving treatments and care to injured soldiers. This thought was done in attempt to prolong their lives until they could be treated in a hospital setting. This thought carried over into the development of the modern day EMS systems.

The premise behind these systems is to provide life saving treatments to sick or injured citizens in their homes and in an ambulance on the way to the hospital (an extension of the physician). The United States Department of Transportation (DOT) was placed in charge of regulating and controlling this new field of pre-hospital medicine. The first thing the D.O.T. did was to specify the curriculum, in this new field of pre-hospital medicine (in 1970), that people were to complete in order to be certified as Emergency Medical Technicians (EMT's). Different levels of training and certification were also developed. These levels became known as EMT-Basic, EMT-Intermediate, and the highest level; EMT-Paramedic.