Pre-Hospital Life Support (PHTLS)

NAEMT's Prehospital Trauma Life Support (PHTLS) is recognized around the world as the leading continuing education program for prehospital emergency trauma care. The mission of PHTLS is to promote excellence in trauma patient management by all providers involved in the delivery of prehospital care through global education.  PHTLS is developed by NAEMT in cooperation with the American College of Surgeons' Committee on Trauma. The Committee provides the medical direction and content oversight for the PHTLS program. 

PHTLS courses improve the quality of trauma care in your area and decrease mortality. The program is based on a prehospital trauma care philosophy, stressing the treatment of the multi-system trauma patient as a unique entity with specific needs. This may require an approach to the trauma patient that varies from traditional treatment modalities. PHTLS promotes critical thinking as the foundation for providing quality care. It is based on the belief that, given a good fund of knowledge and key principles, EMS practitioners are capable of making reasoned decisions regarding patient care. The PHTLS course is continuously updated and revised to keep up with the advances in the field, ATLS Guidelines and feedback from PHTLS participants.

Provider Course: 16 hour course for emergency medical responders, EMTs, Paramedics, nurses, physician assistants and physicians.  This course is offered at Basic, Advanced or Combined levels, and Military Provider courses are also available.  The provider course may be offered in one of two formats:  the traditional onsite face-to-face format with lectures and skill stations; or a hybrid format, where a portion of the course is taken online in an interactive, web-based format, followed by a one day face-to-face for skill station instructions and evaluations.