We take seriously our mission of protecting the public and our commitment to offer fair examinations to all candidates. We reviewed the responses from every candidate who had a failed examination attempt on one of these examination forms to determine if any of the questions at issue could have possibly impacted any candidate’s success on the examination.   

We apologize for this error and we are going to make this right for all AEMT candidates who may have been affected. We are taking steps immediately to provide solutions for each AEMT candidate based on their individual situation.

The public was never at risk as a result of this incident. No one was certified who should not have been certified.  Rather, a few AEMT candidates were administered questions that potentially could have negatively impacted their success with the examination. We are confident in this conclusion because the questions at issue were more difficult than should have been administered to an AEMT candidate.   

Out of an abundance of caution, we performed a comprehensive review of the other examinations offered by the National Registry. Our review determined that the EMR, EMT and Paramedic examinations were not impacted by the error.

Furthermore, the review confirmed that our cognitive examinations are fair, reliable and legally defensible. Despite this, we are taking additional, precautionary quality control steps to ensure that the errors that happened with AEMT will not happen with any other examination administered by the National Registry. 

We appreciate your partnership with us and want to assure you that we take this situation very seriously.  Measures have been taken and additional processes are being put in place to prevent this type of issue from happening again in the future.  

Since its founding in 1970, the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians (NREMT) has offered the nation assurance that the men and women providing emergency treatment in the out-of-hospital setting are capable of providing the care that patients and their loved ones deserve. As the Nation’s EMS Certification organization, the NREMT provides psychometrically-valid proof of entry-level competence for Nationally Certified EMS personnel through rigorous cognitive and psychomotor examinations. National EMS Certification is offered at four levels and must be maintained biennially by demonstrating continued education and skills competence. To date, the NREMT has certified more than 1.8 million EMS professionals. To learn more, please visit the National Registry.

A message from our Executive Director

Media Contact:

Shane Cartmill
Communications & Marketing Manager
scartmill@nremt.org