You'll find a major focus on palliative care with this year's online Fall CME. Giving you a better knowledge about this patient population will help in care whether or not your paramedic service goes on to implement the new care pathways that the Ottawa Health Research Institute plans to introduce through the Paramedics Providing Palliative Care Project. We've included a discussion forum in MedicLEARN to help support the lessons' content.

ALS PCS Pocket Books are now available for you to download as a PDF.

Download to your mobile device for access offline.

In the most recent article of Circulation, an American Heart Association (AHA) journal, Bhanji et al discuss how best to educate healthcare professionals on the new 2015 American Heart Association Guidelines Update for Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation and Emergency Cardiovascular Care. The article contains a whole section dedicated to teamwork and leadership, skills the AHA consider critical to successful management of a cardiac arrest "...team based skills are different from clinical skills, [therefore] specific team and leadership training may have a role in the effective performance of resuscitation teams and patient outcomes after cardiac arrest."

The Regional Paramedic Program for Eastern Ontario is pleased to announce that every paramedic in the RPPEO region is now using the RPPEO’s Online Medical Consultation (OMC) service for all patch consultations with our dedicated group of base hospital physicians (BHP).

Effective April 8, 2020

Other updates:

• Patient Care and Transportation Standards - v2.3
• Provincial Equipment Standards for Ontario Ambulance Services - v3.5
• Advanced Life Support Patient Care Standards - v4.7
• Training Bulletin No. 120 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) - v1.5

The Ministry of Health has published a partial revision to the Advanced Life Support Patient Care Standards (ALS PCS) that will come into force on Monday, November 23, 2020.

Advanced Life Support

Patient Care Standards

Version 4.5

Comes into force May 1, 2018

Download v.4.5

For a summary of changes click here

Version 4.9 of the Advanced Life Support Patient Care Standards (ALS PCS) is now in effect.

The revisions to these Standards include changes to paramedic clinical practice. The Ontario Base Hospital Group (OBHG) Education Subcommittee has prepared a support document that discusses these practice changes.

The RPPEO has made the necessary revisions to paramedics' MedicNET profiles to provide the certifications paramedics require for these practice changes. Paramedics may notice these changes in the letter they received when their RPPEO certification renewed on February 1, 2022.

The Ontario Paramedic Clinical Guide mobile application has been updated with the ALS PCS v.4.9.

The ALS PCS version 4.9 and the support materials available in this article are available in the usual Medical Directives section of the site from February 1 forward.

Version 5.1 of the Advanced Life Support Patient Care Standards (ALS PCS) is now in effect. 

The Ministry of Health has amended version 5.0 of the ALS PCS to include 3 new treat and discharge auxiliary medical directives as well as to integrate minor edits. ALS PCS version 5.1 is in force, replacing the previously circulated version 5.0 of the ALS PCS. Support materials related to ALS PCS 5.0 are applicable to 5.1. 

The revisions to these Standards include changes to paramedic clinical practice. The Ontario Base Hospital Group (OBHG) Education Subcommittee has prepared a support document that discusses these practice changes. 

The Ministry of Health has issued a revised version of the Advanced Life Support Patient Care Standards (ALS PCS). Version 5.2.1 came into force on January 10, 2024.

ALS PCS v5.2.1 corrected the adult doses for atropine and the pediatric doses for pralidoxime in both the PCP and ACP Nerve Agent Exposure Medical Directives.