It has been over five decades since President Johnson’s Committee on Highway Traffic Safety recommended creating a national certification agency to establish uniform standards for training, monitoring, and vetting personnel active in the delivery of emergency ambulance services. The result was the establishment of the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians in 1970.
Since its initiation, the National Registry has certified over 2 million EMS providers nationwide. Today, more than 500,000 individuals are nationally certified at the Emergency Medical Responder (EMR), Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), Advanced-EMT (AEMT), or Paramedic level.