page_title: Emergency medical services in Sri Lanka
section_title: EMT Training Materials
hierarchical_section_title: Emergency medical services in Sri Lanka / EMT Training Materials
caption_attribution_description: English: Cover artwork of the 1st edition of the Sri Lanka Emergency Medical Technician - Basic textbook.
context_page_description: Emergency medical services in Sri Lanka is being established using a public/private system aimed at the provision of emergency ambulance service, including emergency care and transportation to hospitals. The Pre-Hospital Care Committee is part of the Trauma Secretariat of the Sri Lanka Ministry of Healthcare and Nutrition and was established following the 2004 tsunami. The goal of the Pre-Hospital Care Sub-Committee is “During this generation and continuing for future generations, everyone in Sri Lanka will have access to trained pre-hospital medical personnel, ambulances are available to transport the sick and injured safely to hospitals, complications from harmful or inadequate pre-hospital care is eliminated so physician and nursing personnel at hospitals are delivered patients they are able to professionally treat and rehabilitate back to society as contributing citizens.” Pre-Hospital care is an essential, core component of trauma system.
context_section_description: Textbook: The Ministry of Healthcare & Nutrition's Trauma Secretariat, with Medical Teams International, has published the first Emergency Medical Technician textbook in Sri Lanka in both the Singhalese and Tamil languages. This is actually the first Pre-Hospital Emergency Care textbook published in either language. Previously developed textbooks were reviewed and found ineffective because they were direct translations of North American texts and not specific to the South Asia region.  Translations were literal, had grammatical errors, and lacked a national context.  A team of American EMS instructors and Sri Lankan doctors reviewed EMS textbooks and wrote comparable, contextualized texts in Singhalese and Tamil languages.  Two textbooks were created over sixteen months that were specific to Sri Lanka and written by native speakers.  The books emphasized diseases common to Sri Lanka (including organophosphate poisoning and krait envenomation).  With the help of a graphic designer, all figures and photos are culturally appropriate.  The Sri Lankan Ministry of Healthcare has adopted the text for future training.
  Skills DVD: To complement the textbook, and ensure skills were demonstrated uniformly in all future EMT courses, Medical Teams International and the Trauma Secretariat, produced a DVD demonstrating forty of the common Basic and Advanced Pre-Hospital skills. All skills were demonstrated by Sri Lankan EMTs or doctors in a local context.  Students and instructors can choose to play each clip in English, Singhalese, or Tamil.
caption: The Sri Lankan EMT Textbook
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