National Center for Outdoor & Adventure Education — Attraction in North Carolina

I have recently completed the hybrid intensive initial EMT course and I am very satisfied with the education and training I have received for an initial EMT program. We did Zoom lectures everyday to start which generally went from 8am to late afternoon. They also had office hours later in the evening for students who wanted additional clarification or had more questions. There were four exams and a final. Before each exam we had a review and after each one, we went over any questions that students had about items they got wrong on the test.

After the lecture portion of the class, we then all gathered at the school house in Wilmington to get hands on practice and begin applying what the lectures had introduced us to. We had students come from all over the country, in addition to North Carolina. There were students from Florida, Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Oregon. This part of the course was my favorite as I became familiar with the equipment and procedures that an EMT would be expected to be able to handle on the job. What I really appreciated was the hours and hours of scenarios where we were given an emergency situation and went through the procedure from start to finish for how we would handle it. Students played the role of the primary EMT, the patient, and an assistant EMT and we would all rotate through these roles to ensure that everyone had a chance to develop some confidence in their scene size up, primary assessment, secondary assessment, and treating for a wide variety of conditions that EMTs can come across in real life. The schoolhouse provided mannequins, gear bags with real equipment, and allowed us 24/7 access to the classroom so we could train after hours. North Carolina now mandates experience behind the wheel of an ambulance as part of the EMT initial class and so we all got a chance to drive NCOAE's training ambulance. Kate and Zac, who run the program, do a fantastic job of clearly explaining all the topics and making sure that we as students are set up for success. The instructors are very, very knowledgeable and have a wealth of real world experience to impart to us students. Many of the instructors come from a first responder background, of course, in addition to experience as firefighters and/or the military.

After the classroom portion, the final part of the class is clinical hours. We all went on 4 12-hour shifts which were split between ambulances and emergency rooms. I got tons of experience taking vitals, talking to and assessing patients, doing 12-leads, and helping nurses triage patients. Some of the students even got to do CPR on patients in real life during their clinical hours.

I would also note that an intensive 3-week every day program such as this is, in my opinion, far more preferable to a drawn out semester program. A comparable situation would be being immersed in a foreign country to learn a language versus spending an hour or two a couple days a week for five months studying a language. You're going to get more out of immersive training than you are out of small increments of training spread out over time. NCOAE definitely provides this and the instructors care about you passing and make themselves available to you for any help you need.

As far as criticisms go, I don't really have any except for a suggestion for improvement. An MCI scenario would have been good to train on, maybe after students became comfortable with doing individual single-patient scenarios.

I know some people on other reviews have complained about the cabins being too "rustic," but it's an outdoor adventure and education institution. The focus is on quality training, not luxury. You are not mandated to stay in the cabins on campus, you are free to stay elsewhere off campus whether that's an AirBnb split with other students, or a hotel, etc.

I would definitely recommend the program to anyone looking to get started in EMS, or looking to join a fire department, or those who need a certification to gain patient care experience for applying to advanced medical schools like...

This is an AMAZING way to obtain your EMT certification, as well as prepare for a future in medicine/healthcare! I loved that they really prioritized efficiency and have created a curriculum that is tailored to EXACTLY what you need to succeed as an EMT. There is a great balance of understanding conditions, pathophysiology & the human body itself, as well as not making things too complicated and just highlighting best practices and techniques. The instructors are very approachable and make it clear questions are the BEST way to learn. It's clear how much they care about your success in the course and by taking it with NCOAE, I don't see how you could fail if you put in your best effort - they will do the rest. Be mindful of how intense it will be if you choose the hybrid, 21 day option. There is understandably a lot of material to cover, all on important topics, so you must be willing to work hard without breaks. However, they'll meet you where you're at, so I definitely recommend it if you are wanting to get your EMT...

I went to NCOAE for the EMT hybrid course. The level of preparation and professionalism was revealed in the quality of the services that they offered to us. NCOAE prepared such an excellent curriculum that they were able to prepare us for the National Registry EMT Exam. The level of knowledge of the instructors is second to none. They made the classes interesting by answering lots of questions and providing us with examples of situations that they encountered in real life, and telling us how they dealt with it. The instructors were super knowledgeable, smart, funny, understanding, supportive, and you could tell that teaching is something that they value a lot. Everyone at NCOAE was very kind and eager to help us in any way they could! I would recommend this to anyone. It might've been just a 21 day class, but for me it was an intense course that gave us the tools necessary to go out there and perform life saving measures without a...