Community Paramedic Curriculum Standard

Community paramedicine, an evolving model of community-based health care, is an innovative and growing field of paramedicine. Designed to integrate with existing health care and public health resources while utilizing the unique skills of specially trained paramedics and their availability 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, community paramedicine programs mobilize community paramedics to provide non-urgent care in out-of-hospital settings. Often certified as primary or advanced care paramedics, they require additional education to provide immediate or scheduled primary, urgent, and/or specialized health care to vulnerable patient populations in out-of-hospital settings, focusing on prevention, management of complex chronic disease, and improving equity in health care access across the continuum of care. While the role of paramedics has expanded, paramedicine in Canada is constrained by a lack of formal and influential national structures and an emphasis for stakeholders on meeting local and regional operating needs. Regulated at the provincial and territorial levels, unique paramedic systems, such as community paramedicine, have emerged across the country. Community paramedics in Canada require additional, consistent education to better respond during COVID-19 and any future pandemics so that they can keep patients safe at home and improve the delivery of patient care to those who are sick, either with COVID-19 or with other conditions. This new standard will consider guidance for the additional education and training that paramedics require to become community paramedics so that everyone in the health care system benefits.