The situation is this, the Herald and The Associated Press have reported: A national committee is revisiting the rules for licensing EMTs. The committee has useful ideas for beefing up and standardizing EMT training, adding such skills as injecting epinephrine to people suffering severe allergic reactions.

The trouble is that the new curriculum could more than double the time EMTs must train to get certified, the story reported. Currently, EMTs need 110 hours of training to get their initial certification.

And volunteers already are hard to come by, ambulance personnel in rural North Dakota and elsewhere reported. If the requirement jumps to 200-plus hours, the task will be extremely difficult or even impossible, they predicted.

They have a point. This situation fulfills the classic saying, &uot;The perfect is the enemy of the good.&uot; The good in this case is the way things are right now; volunteer EMTs in rural areas can’t do everything, but they can stabilize most patients by rendering basic first aid and transporting them to the hospital. That will change if would-be volunteers are scared off by the training requirements. …

The proposed rule sounds great for professional firefighters and others who get paid for their work and some of the training they undertake. But it shouldn’t apply to rural areas if it will make things worse rather than better.

&045;Grand Forks (N.D.) Herald