Paramedic Board Certification: The International Board of Specialty Certification Turns 20

The International Board of Specialty Certification (IBSC) has been offering specialty certification for 20 years. Originally formed as the Board for Critical Care Transport Paramedic Certification (BCCTPC), the first official examination at the Air Medical Transport Conference (AMTC) in October of 2000. Paramedic specialty certification flourished because of the vision and tireless commitment of a small group of paramedic champions. Some of that group from 20 years ago included David O. Bump, John R. Clark, Dr. John Cole, Dr. Robert Donovan, Chris Giller, Lisa Gilmore, Jonathan Gryniuk; Bob Hesse, TJ Kennedy, Brian Schaeffer, and Jackie Stocking. Without their tenacity, paramedic specialty certification would not be celebrating this milestone. The IBSC is a functional specialty board with a mission to support paramedicine specialties anywhere in the world. The Certified Flight Paramedic (FP-C®), Certified Critical Care Paramedic (CCP-C®) Certified Tactical Paramedic (TP-C®), Certified Tactical Responder (TR-C®) and Certified Community Paramedic (CP-C®) examinations are well established and have become a recognized standard for clinical competency by medical providers in the United States, Europe, South Africa and the Middle East. Founded in 2000, the IBSC is a not-for-profit professional certification organization responsible for the administration and development of specialty certification exams for critical care professionals. The mission of the IBSC is to improve quality of care in all aspects of specialty EMS care across a wide variety of settings by providing a portfolio of certification exams that are an objective, fair, and honest validation of specialty knowledge to paramedics and other allied health providers are called upon to perform critical care transport. Exams are developed that are responsive to the needs of the paramedic community. Currently, there are nearly 10,000 board certified providers in one of the five specialty designations.