Things that bother me: Poor post-nominal letter usage

Post-nominal letters. Ahhh, the confusion that they create. But they shouldn’t.

For example: if you didn’t attend a course offered by the University of Maryland Baltimore County, but instead sat in a class for 16 hours at your ambulance service, where they taught you how to set up a ventilator, and maybe the difference in LAE and LVH, then please, don’t use the post-nominal letters “CCEMT-P.”

By the way, it’s not “Critical Care Emergency Medical Technician,” it stands for “Transport.” Nurses take that class too.

CCEMT means you attended a UMBC course, period. UMBC is widely respected, with a known curriculum. It’s kind of like NREMT, but not. The NREMT tests all paramedics to the same (debatable, I know…) standard, and UMBC does the same with CCEMT.

And what’s with all the dashes thrown up in there? What exactly is “CC-EMT-P” supposed to mean?

There is also an order these things are supposed to go. Academic degrees should go first, in ascending order. Bachelor’s degrees, then master’s degrees, then doctorates. So, “PhD, MBA, BS” would be inappropriate.

There should also be an ascending order of academic education, or titles. “FP-C, NREMT-P, CCEMT-P, LMNO-P” wouldn’t be appropriate, either.

Not that post-nominal letters mean anything to anyone outside of this business, anyways. Not that post-nominal letters mean anything to anyone in this business, either.

But let’s try to get it right, or not do it at all, shall we?