The National EMS Culture of Safety Strategy was published. Funded by
the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the initiative brought
together the EMS stakeholder community to identify what constitutes a safe
environment for EMS patients and practitioners; barriers to achieving a safe EMS
environment; and a strategy to overcome these challenges.
The strategy envisioned the establishment of a national level organization to
coordinate national EMS safety efforts and serve as a repository for information,
data and resources. In 2015, leading national EMS and safety organizations came
together to form the National EMS Safety Council. The goals of the council are to:
• Ensure that patients receive emergency and mobile healthcare with the highest
standards of safety.
• Promote a safe and healthy work environment for all emergency and mobile
healthcare practitioners.
This Guide for Developing an EMS Agency Safety Program is an initiative of the
National EMS Safety Council. Its members saw the need to provide tools and
resources that EMS agencies could use to put the concepts outlined in the Culture
of Safety Strategy to use in their daily operations.
The purpose of the guide is to serve as a roadmap for EMS agencies to develop
and implement a comprehensive safety program. Recognizing that EMS agencies
have differing levels of resources available for safety programs, the guide contains
sample policies EMS agencies can adopt or readily customize to their particular
agency type, size and needs