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Snohomish County EMS: Elevating standards in emergency medical services
Snohomish County EMS, located in a large county north of Seattle, serves as the emergency medical services authority for the region, supporting nearly 2,000 Emergency Medical Technicians (EMTs) and paramedics.
Led by the Medical Program Director, Ryan, the organisation is responsible for delivering certification exams and education to ensure that medical staff follow current protocols and deliver safe, effective patient care. However, challenges posed by budget cuts and staff reductions made managing paper-based exams increasingly difficult, which made Ryan look for an online exam platform that would streamline their exam delivery.
The challenge of in-person exams
Stuck in the 1980’s with a time consuming process
Snohomish County EMS faced significant obstacles for their traditional paper-based exams due to budget cuts and staff losses. These challenges highlighted the need to streamline operations as limited time and resources increasingly strained their exam administration process.
Exams previously required extensive manual effort and it was a time-consuming task that “took many, many hours”, and significantly delayed exam deployment and results. Staff would have to:
- Visit a site to proctor candidates in-person
- Grade the exams by hand
- Compile the results for certification.
“We would have to administer our paper test, and then have to go through this whole process where we filled out a bunch of certification paperwork, sent into the state. It all felt very 1980s and antiquated.“
Tackling complex question development after major protocol revisions
The organisation recently undertook a significant overhaul of their medical protocols - a massive project involving extensive updates and changes across a 250-page document. Following this major revision, the team faced the daunting task of creating a high-quality, reliable exam questions to assess and certify nearly 2,000 EMTs and paramedics on the updated standards.
“We recently rolled out a revision of our protocols that was a major revision, lots and lots of changes, and then we were faced with a task of developing an exam that was high yield, reproducible.”
However, with limited resources and a lean team, manually developing the exam questions felt like a mammoth task. The team needed support not only in creating exam questions but also in establishing a flexible, reliable online exam system for deployment across a large, geographically dispersed county.
Choosing Synap for a modern exam experience
To modernise and improve efficiency, Snohomish County EMS explored several online exam platforms before discovering Synap, an exam software that aligned well with all their needs for exam delivery and security, as well as utilising AI for question creation.
“We were looking for a service that could help us develop the exam, because that was, in our lean-down office, a huge Herculean task.”
Synap’s focus on user experience, customisable proctoring, and an AI-driven question creation method made it an ideal choice for Snohomish County EMS’s testing needs. Ryan emphasised the importance of reliability and consistency with choosing an online exam platform, stating: “We have a large stakeholder group, and we needed something that was reliable and reproducible.”
Launching in 7 days with hands-on support
With tight deadlines and an urgent need for a seamless transition, Snohomish County EMS required a rapid onboarding process to develop and deploy their new exams. The organisation was under pressure to implement an updated exam format that would align with their revised protocols to certify paramedics and EMT’s.
Synap’s personalised approach made all the difference:
- Swift setup: Synap worked with Snohomish County EMS on a "sprint" development timeline, meeting their urgent need for quick deployment. The collaborative process began on a Monday before a holiday weekend, and just 7 days later, the AI-questions and exam were ready to roll out.
- AI-assisted question creation: Synap’s AI approach created an initial bank of exam questions based on the county’s protocols, which the EMS team could then refine. This significantly reduced the workload and allowed them to finalise the exam questions faster.
- Personalised support: Synap’s team worked closely with the organisations directors to ensure a smooth setup. The willingness to provide one-to-one support via Zoom, iterative feedback, and Synap’s responsiveness during the onboarding were crucial to the successful rollout.
“ I felt that the hands on and the personal attention that we received to really roll this product out quickly made it very successful, and the flexibility of the company was amazing in terms of being able to meet in a very short timeframe and go over things.”
Open book certification exams with AI generated questions
Synap effectively tackled the challenges Snohomish County EMS faced by delivering a comprehensive set of features tailored to their needs. The flexible proctoring options and intuitive interface enabled an adult-style learning allowing for both efficient exam management and a streamlined testing experience that matched their educational standards.
Refining exam content with AI and feedback
The process began by Synap reviewing Snohomish County EMS’s updated paramedic protocols to understand their specific testing needs. Using this information, the AI generated a set of questions across various topics, tagging them for easy organisation.
Snohomish County EMS staff then reviewed the questions, provided feedback and recommendations on what worked and what needed improvement. Synap used this feedback to refine the AI, enhancing the questions to ensure they met the organisation’s educational standards and testing requirements.
“The company developed, through an AI tool, a set of questions. And then after that, we started an iterative process of working through the questions, what worked, what didn't work, and allowed us to develop a final product.”
This collaborative, iterative approach resulted in a highly relevant and effective question bank for their certification exams.
User-friendly interface for collaborative development
Synap’s interface enabled Snohomish County EMS staff to collaboratively create, review, and refine exam questions asynchronously, making it easy for team members to contribute feedback and make adjustments regardless of their schedules.
This collaborative environment allowed them to provide comments on AI-generated questions, fine-tuning them to better align with their updated protocols and educational goals. With ongoing refinement, the Synap online exam platform helped the team maintain high-quality standards while efficiently preparing the final exam questions under a tight deadline.
“My education coordinator and I would sometimes go in hours apart, and make comments and make adjustments, and then we would work with you guys as well. So that was really useful.”
Providing secure proctoring for an open book exam
Synap’s flexible proctoring options enabled Snohomish County EMS to administer exams with a level of security tailored to adult learning. The exams were designed as open-book, encouraging candidates to consult learning resources to help them answer questions. This approach focused on assessing the application of knowledge rather than testing recall and memorisation. However, Snohomish County EMS also sought to control the resources test-takers could access during the exam.
“We can set the level of security with proctoring, which is amazing…I don't want an old-fashioned, multiple choice test. I want adult-style test-taking where there is a time limit… they can look at resources, but they can't search everywhere to get the answer.”
The results: Reduced costs, increased efficiency, and faster certification
Since implementing Synap and utilising its features, Snohomish County EMS has reported significant improvements in both efficiency and exam quality:
- Cost and time savings: With immediate test results, certified EMTs and paramedics can promptly return to active duty. This has reduced downtime and associated costs for the organisation and its partner agencies.
“That immediate feedback allows them to get their employees out and on the streets and working with patients as soon as possible, which is a cost savings for them as well, so people aren't sitting around with downtime.”
- Enhanced efficiency: The automated grading and streamlined process reduced the administrative burden on staff, cutting hours that would previously have been spent manually proctoring and grading exams.
- Improved exam completion rates: With Synap’s adult-focused testing format, the EMS team has achieved a 95% pass rate, and feedback indicates that staff find the process straightforward and effective.
“So far, we've administered several dozen of the exams. The feedback from my education coordinator is that it has been simple and really hiccup free, and we're able to provide immediate results to our agencies.”
What’s next for Snohomish County EMS?
Building on their success, Snohomish County EMS plans to leverage Synap’s AI technology for future certification and educational requirements. In the coming year, they will introduce new protocols and use Synap to ensure EMTs and paramedics have a functional understanding of critical concepts.
“We have a new protocol version that's going to roll out in…and so we’ll have to make some modifications. We’ll hopefully be able to leverage the AI technology so that we can develop some new questions.”
Synap’s partnership with Snohomish County EMS demonstrates how customised online exam solutions can improve both operational efficiency and educational quality. By choosing Synap, Snohomish County EMS has successfully modernised its exam administration, reduced its resource constraints, and set a new standard for efficient, scalable, and impactful certification in emergency medical services.
