First Responders must make on-the-spot decisions that affect their own safety and that of many others. They are extremely vulnerable because of the urgency of their decisions, subsequent actions and frequent unknowns surrounding the situations they find themselves in. As potential recipients of their service, we expect them to be well trained and up to date on medical knowledge and procedures, especially for accidents or major incidents. Much first responder continuation training takes place in large seminars and consists of lectures on diverse subjects that may be of interest, and, less likely, of use to most first responders. This issue led to a program to standardize treatment protocols and provide first responders training that keeps their knowledge and skills sharp. This report discusses a set of on-line courses that were developed under military sponsorship, but which are of specific interest and use to the emergency medical service community. The paper reports the partial results of a validation effort for two of these courses: WMD/HazMat and Mass Casualty Incidents. There is much to learn, even from these partial results. The authors have been quite candid in reporting both success and failure.

This paper will report the process employed to evaluate the effectiveness the e-learning system, report the results, and discuss implications. The authors not only report their findings about the effectiveness of the continuation training tool, but also about the use of web-based technology as a delivery medium.