Do you teach a paramedic or EMT course and are looking for ways to keep learning interesting?

Here’s a tip on how to approach teaching response to respiratory illness. Have the students get up and walk up, then down three flights of stairs. Then have the students repeat the exercise while breathing just through a plastic soda straw. Finally, have the students walk up the stairs using a small stirring or coffee straw.

Your students will be astonished by how difficult it is to get enough air to breathe while doing such a simple action. Luckily for them, they can remove the straw and breathe normally. Something the patients that we treat cannot do.

The first step is teaching proper treatment of a patient in pain is to let students experience it themselves.