EMD EMD Roles and Responsibilities 3 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: The medical director's primary role in an EMD system is to:
- Take over dispatch duties during mass casualty events
- Provide medical oversight and authorize the protocols used by EMDs (Correct answer)
- Train all field EMS personnel in clinical skills
- Answer overflow calls when dispatchers are overwhelmed
Correct answer: Provide medical oversight and authorize the protocols used by EMDs
The medical director provides physician oversight, approves protocols, and is legally responsible for the medical quality of the EMD program.
Question 2: Quality Assurance (QA) in an EMD center primarily involves:
- Reviewing recorded calls to ensure protocol adherence and identify improvement areas (Correct answer)
- Upgrading communications equipment on a regular schedule
- Reducing the total number of emergency calls received each shift
- Hiring additional dispatchers during high-call-volume periods
Correct answer: Reviewing recorded calls to ensure protocol adherence and identify improvement areas
QA programs systematically review calls to evaluate whether EMDs followed approved protocols and to identify coaching or retraining needs.
Question 3: EMD certification typically requires:
- A minimum of five years of field paramedic experience
- Completion of an approved EMD training course and ongoing continuing education (Correct answer)
- A four-year degree in emergency management
- On-scene emergency response experience as the sole prerequisite
Correct answer: Completion of an approved EMD training course and ongoing continuing education
Initial certification requires completing an accredited EMD course, and recertification mandates continuing education to maintain competency.
Question 4: Which best describes an EMD's legal responsibility when it comes to protocol use?
- EMDs may substitute personal judgment for protocols during busy shifts
- Deviating from approved protocols without documented justification can create legal liability (Correct answer)
- Protocols are advisory only and carry no legal weight
- Legal responsibility rests solely with the medical director, not the individual EMD
Correct answer: Deviating from approved protocols without documented justification can create legal liability
Because protocols carry medical and legal authority, unjustified deviation exposes both the dispatcher and the agency to liability.
Question 5: The 'priority dispatch' system was developed primarily to:
- Allow dispatchers to personally decide which calls deserve a response
- Systematically categorize emergencies and allocate the most appropriate response level (Correct answer)
- Enable dispatchers to provide hospital route directions to callers
- Replace EMD training requirements with an automated answering system
Correct answer: Systematically categorize emergencies and allocate the most appropriate response level
Priority dispatch protocols use a structured question set to assign a coded determinant that guides the type and urgency of the response sent.
Question 6: Regarding patient confidentiality, EMDs must:
- Share all call details with any law enforcement agency that requests them
- Protect patient health information in accordance with HIPAA regulations (Correct answer)
- Post incident summaries publicly to promote community safety awareness
- Provide full patient records to media outlets when requested
Correct answer: Protect patient health information in accordance with HIPAA regulations
EMDs handle protected health information and are bound by HIPAA to safeguard patient privacy, releasing information only as legally permitted.
Question 7: When a caller does not speak English, an EMD should:
- Terminate the call and route it to a bilingual dispatcher only
- Use an approved interpreter service or language line to communicate (Correct answer)
- Attempt to communicate using phonetically described gestures
- Transfer the call directly to the nearest hospital switchboard
Correct answer: Use an approved interpreter service or language line to communicate
Approved language line or interpreter services allow EMDs to gather critical information and provide pre-arrival instructions to non-English-speaking callers.
EMD EMD Roles and Responsibilities 3
The medical director's primary role in an EMD system is to: