The Ministry of Health's Emergency Health Regulatory and Accountability Branch has published a partial revision to the Provincial Equipment Standards for Ontario Ambulances version 3.6. The revised Equipment Standards come into force on Monday, December 20, 2021.

The Ministry has also provided a Summary of Changes to version 3.6 of the Equipment Standards.

For a complete list of all the up-to-date standards for Ontario paramedicine, please visit the Paramedic Practice Documents page on the Ministry of Health website.

If you have any questions about this update, contact ParamedicStandards@Ontario.ca.

MyGriefToolbox.ca helps paramedics respond to palliative care calls and expands their capacity to provide quality care.

The first seven modules provide paramedics with:

• Tactics to support patients and families in acute grief before and after a death.
• Strategies to intervene sensitively.
• Guidance to constructively manage work-related grief and the other stresses of working with people at end of life.
• There is also a module for your friends and family to help them understand and respond to the stresses of your career.
• Your words and actions matter. They significantly impact your patients and their families and have the potential to make a positive (or negative) impact for years to come.

It is Paramedic Services Week and the RPPEO would like to acknowledge and honor the hard work and dedication of the paramedics of Eastern Ontario. Over the past year more has been asked of paramedics than ever before, and you have answered the call. Every day you respond to calls for help from the ill and injured. Each call for service is made by someone who sees or feels a problem they believe they cannot manage on their own, and there is a noble place in history for those who come to help.

What do you think of our new site design?

We've just launched the new RPPEO site design!

It was time to move the RPPEO website design to a new platform that supports the latest in security and site features.

With this move, we've refreshed the content and organization based on paramedics' feedback. The RPPEO website is a vital link between the base hospital and paramedics for medical direction, clinical advice, quality & patient safety, certification and continuing education.

Our top priority with this new design is that paramedics can easily find the practice information that they need. Following that, we also want paramedics to feel that they're getting updates on relevant base hospital news and the trends in clinical quality, patient safety, continuing education and paramedic certification that affect them and their practice of paramedicine.

In launching the new site design, we've made two big changes:

The Regional Paramedic Program for Eastern Ontario (RPPEO) is pleased to announce a new, more secure and efficient correspondence process for discussions of quality & safety and patient outcomes.

Beginning in November, 2023, paramedics will receive an automated email with a unique, encrypted link to correspondence about quality & safety reviews or new information about patient outcomes.

Using the link in the email, paramedics will login using your base hospital credentials. Once logged in, you will find the latest correspondence from the base hospital for your review and action.

Watch your email for your first correspondence using the new methods for correspondence!

The Ontario Base Hospital Group Education Subcommittee (OBHG ESC) has released its Companion Document for the Advanced Life Support Patient Care Standards version 5.1. 

The Companion Document is an educational tool that helps to provide clarification on changes and updates to the Advanced Life Support Patient Care Standards.

Medical Directives Page

• Paramedics with disabilities can request accommodations for barriers they encounter in certification, education, or other RPPEO services.
• Each request will be evaluated individually, and appropriate accommodations will be determined collaboratively.
• The policy is available on RPPEO.ca in the Policy section.

The Ontario Base Hospital Group (OBHG) is seeking applications for new representation from front line paramedics for all provincial committees:

• Ontario Base Hospital Group Medical Advisory Committee (OBHG MAC) -2
• Data Quality Management Subcommittee (DQM) -1
• Education Subcommittee (ESC) -1

 Term: April 1, 2024 – March 31, 2027

For more information about this opportunity and how to apply, please see the invitation on the OBHG website. Note that the application deadline is March 1, 2024.

More information about OHBG and its committees is available by visiting the Paramedics section of the OBHG website. 

Remember when you could bring a page of notes into your math exam? Having all the formulas written out in your teeny-tiny scribble really helped not to forget that r was squared and c was a constant equal to the speed of light.

Now you've got a similar tool integrated into the Ontario Paramedic Clinical Guide.

The new tool isn't for math, though. The Ontario Base Hospital Group put the key highlights for applying the prehospital Canadian Triage and Acuity Score (CTAS) to your adult patients into graphic form.

We're thrilled to share an exciting update that will improve patient care: the expansion of Online Medical Consultation (OMC) services to two more base hospitals - the Centre for Paramedic Education and Research (CPER) in Hamilton, and Health Sciences North (HSN) in Sudbury.