DT4EMS - Defensive Tactics for EMS

About Us

Our courses take a four pronged approach, with training in four specific areas: Mental, Physical, Media and Courtroom.

The mental training teaches the provider the difference between a patient and an attacker. This is important because you want your staff treating a patient who's confused or has an altered mental status for medical reasons differently than an intoxicated or drugged attacker in a similar situation. A lack of training leaves the provider responding primally, like a caveman.

The actual physical skills leave the provider with a realistic belief in their skill level. DT4EMS allows them to understand what it takes to escape violent encounters. Our experience in training is that the more a person trains, the less they use physical skills.

Training for the media age is important because so many people have access to photo and video equipment. We train your staff to appear at all times non-threatening with verbal skills and body language. There are no closed-fist techniques taught in our courses.

Finally we train for the legal process that will occur after a violent encounter. This includes documentation skills and proper reporting to supervisors and law enforcement.

If your current training does not cover all four areas, then your training is not designed for the complicated arena of the healthcare provider. Stop by and read what EMS professionals have said about our courses here :
http://www.dt4ems.net/comments.htm

Why DT4EMS?

It has become a reality in the Pre-Hospital Emergency Medical Services and Hospital Emergency Room environments that providers of emergency care are more frequently becoming the victims of assault from patients, family members of patients and bystanders. A regular part of their training is how to recognize an unsafe scene or environment. But what happens when emergency personnel find themselves in a situation where an assault upon them is imminent? What training is provided by employers and providers to their employees and volunteers on how to deal with that situation? If a provider deals with a situation by striking someone in an inappropriate manner because of improper training what happens then……

FAILURE TO TRAIN

First, the plaintiff must show that a policymaker knows "to a moral certainty" that their employees will confront a given situation. Thus, a policymaker does not exhibit deliberate indifference by failing to train employees for rare or unforeseen events.

Second, the plaintiff must show that the situation either presents the employee with a difficult choice of the sort that training or supervision will make less difficult or that there is a history of employees mishandling the situation.

Third, the plaintiff must show that the wrong choice by the employee will frequently cause the deprivation of a citizen's constitutional rights.

Where the plaintiff establishes all three elements, then we think it can be said with confidence that the policymaker should have known that inadequate training or supervision was "so likely to result in the violation of constitutional rights, that the policymakers of the city can reasonably be said to have been deliberately indifferent to the need."

WALKER v. CITY OF NEW YORK, 974 F.2d 293 (2nd Cir. 1992)

Defensive Tactics for EMS, ( DT4EMS™ ) is for Pre-hospital Emergency Medical Service Providers and Hospital Emergency Room Providers (EMS Providers) and was created by EMS Providers. It is a training and response program that teaches EMS Providers to prevent, avoid and escape an assault. Our DT4EMS™ courses provide training in Verbal Skills, Assault Response Levels, Legal, Moral and Ethical Self-Defense as well as documentation training to provide protection after any use of force. It is important for EMS providers to receive training in self-defense to keep them from reverting to caveman style techniques in a violent encounter that could result in civil and/or criminal liability.