Stay sharp by staying certified

Find the resources you need to train, test, and get certified on the International Academies of Emergency Dispatch (IAED) Protocols and ProQA Software.

Commit to offering the best possible service every day

It’s an honor and a duty to serve as a First Responder, and as an Emergency Dispatcher fielding calls, you’re the First, First Responder. Just like specially trained officers, paramedics, and firefighters, your job requires specialized, ongoing training to excel, day in and day out. Priority Dispatch is proud to offer the IAED’s comprehensive training and certification programs. Based on the most up-to-date standards of care and practice, the IAED programs ensure every Emergency Dispatcher using the system is properly trained, tested, certified, and recertified.

There are over 116,890 active Medical, Fire, Police, and Nurse Triage Dispatchers certified through the IAED.

Training Resources Available

Courses

With content and curriculum developed and approved by the IAED, the courses offered through Priority Dispatch ensure you have access to the most up-to-date, clinically supported patient care in any discipline. Whether your team needs training in nurse triage, medical, fire, and police dispatching, or professional development through courses like Dispatcher-Directed CPR, our course catalog has what you need and more.

Certification

Emergency Dispatcher certification helps ensure that the highest standards of customer service, care, and public safety are met. To become certified, you start by taking courses in medical, fire, or police dispatching and/or nurse triage (some conditions apply for nurse triage certification) developed under the direction of IAED’s Boards of Curriculum. After successfully completing a test administered by the IAED, you’ll receive a certification for that discipline.

Recertification

Every two years the member will be required to recertify. Recertification is the responsibility of each member; as such, members are responsible for tracking their own expiration dates and Continuing Dispatch Education. Recertification submissions cannot be accepted more than 6 months before your recertification’s expiration date. The recertification test is an open-protocol exam and must be passed with a score of at least 80%.

Continuing Dispatch Education

Recertification for the medical, fire, police, or nurse triage protocols requires 24 hours of Continuing Dispatch Education (CDE) every two years. The best place to get started on your CDE is the College of Emergency Dispatch, where you’ll find a variety of courses to meet your recertification requirements. Visit the links below to find courses and learn about other ways to earn your CDE hours.

From a training perspective I appreciate the protocol because it gives an objective way to measure training's performance. Uniform training and standards now provide objective universal baselines to measure if Emergency Dispatchers are ready to be at the console.

Jordan Roberts, ENP Assistant Emergency Communications Manager, Camarillo, CA

First Responder orientation during the implementation process helps the first responders understand the protocol and what it's going to do for them, particularly with the tiered response system. They start to understand that it's not just about a bunch of questions, but pertinent information being gathered that they can depend on.

Teri Best, Director, Pecos Valley Regional Communications Center, Roswell, NM

We went to our communication officers (Emergency Dispatchers) to ask what they needed. Experienced officers had already been using locally-developed protocols for 15 or 20 years. But as we started looking at the [ProQA] protocols they could see we had been missing out on science that comes with these protocols. Those experienced communication officers said things like, 'Do you mean that there's really a protocol for that?' I've always wanted to change this, I'm so glad somebody has.

Sonny Saxton, Executive Director, Charlottesville-UVA-Albemarle County ECC, Charlottesville, VA

To date, we’ve trained and certified nearly a quarter of a million Emergency Dispatchers.

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