[Practical training for paramedics : Transformation at the Leipzig University teaching hospital]

The "Notfallsanitätergesetz" (the law pertaining to paramedics), which came into effect in January 2014, has fundamentally changed the training of health personnel in German prehospital emergency medicine. The apprenticeship now takes 3 years including 720 h of practical training in eligible hospitals. To date, however, there has been little experience of how the contents of the guidelines for practical training ("Ausbildungs- und Prüfungsverordnung") can be reasonably applied in the teaching hospitals.

In a total of nine interdisciplinary working group meetings between October 2014 and June 2016, we developed a curriculum concerning the practical training of paramedics to implement the contents of the guidelines for practical training in a didactically and an organizationally meaningful way.

The implementation of the practical training of paramedics is an excellent chance for the teaching hospitals to contribute to higher quality prehospital emergency medicine. Otherwise, the teaching hospitals face an organizational and personal effort that is not to be underestimated. Thus, a modular curriculum constitutes the possibility of standardizing practical training and simultaneously reducing the time and expenditure for the participating hospitals.

The development of a unique curriculum for the practical training of paramedics may contribute to standardized, high-quality, and cost-efficient training.