Development
ECAs at present have no clear career pathway of progression to technician or paramedic status and this has been widely discussed within many ambulance trusts. In the fourth quarter of 2008, West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust announced progression for 80 ECAs to become emergency medical technicians in 2009. A large number of ECAs have since undertaken IHCD ambulance technician courses and many are now qualified technicians. West Midlands Ambulance Service has continued to offer technician courses throughout 2010, 2011 and 2012 to existing staff eligible to take them.
Some other ambulance Trusts that use the ECA role have begun to work on providing development for ECAs to become paramedics, using part-time higher education routes, such as the Open University. This is in line with the NHS "Skills Escalator" approach to staff development. It provides a development route for ECAs that are able to study (to a minimum of Higher Education Diploma), whilst remaining in employment, rather than becoming a full-time university student.
Read more about this topic: Emergency Care Assistant
Famous quotes containing the word development:
“The man, or the boy, in his development is psychologically deterred from incorporating serving characteristics by an easily observable fact: there are already people around who are clearly meant to serve and they are girls and women. To perform the activities these people are doing is to risk being, and being thought of, and thinking of oneself, as a woman. This has been made a terrifying prospect and has been made to constitute a major threat to masculine identity.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)
“To be sure, we have inherited abilities, but our development we owe to thousands of influences coming from the world around us from which we appropriate what we can and what is suitable to us.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)