Foster School of Medicine Faculty Leave a Global Impact on Paramedic Training

Newswise — EL PASO, Texas — Texas Tech Health El Paso associate professor Radosveta Wells, M.D., and Brian Wilson, director of simulation education in the university’s Training and Educational Center for Healthcare Simulation, known as TECHS, are using their experiences to enhance health care globally by assisting with a first-ever paramedic training program at Medical University of Plovidv and the first-ever in Bulgaria course introducing simulation in paramedic education.

Dr. Wells never imagined a connection between El Paso, Texas, and her native country Bulgaria – more than 6,000 miles away on the Balkan Peninsula – would contribute to a dramatic shift in the way medical professionals in Bulgaria respond to emergencies. 

Dr. Wells, an associate professor of emergency medicine at Texas Tech Health El Paso, earned her M.D. at the Medical University of Sofia, located in the capital of Bulgaria.

Building on relationships with physicians in her home country, Dr. Wells began working with the Medical University of Plovdiv in Bulgaria in September 2022 to expand their health care simulation center education, using Texas Tech Health El Paso’s TECHS laboratory as a model. Health care simulation centers train students using high-tech, lifelike medical manikins that simulate breathing, sweating, heart palpitations and more, allowing for ultra-realistic, hands-on medical interactions.

But by December 2022, both Dr. Wells and the Bulgarian university had an entirely new focus: paramedic training.

“The Medical University of Plovdiv was tasked with creating a program to train paramedics, something that was in the early stages of development in Bulgaria at the time,” said Dr. Wells, who also serves as the Texas Tech Health El Paso emergency medicine residency program director. “It was a stroke of luck that I was already working with them on the simulation center.”

In Bulgaria, certain health care facilities are narrowly specialized, and emergency medicine isn’t the same specialty as in the United States, Dr. Wells said. In the U.S., when we call 911, we expect trained paramedics to arrive by ambulance or fire truck, thanks to the development of emergency medicine and paramedic training programs with roots reaching back to the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. But in Bulgaria, when ambulances are called, physicians ride along. 

From October 2022 to January 2023, Dr. Wells, Wilson and Russell Baker, D.O., associate professor in the Department of Emergency Medicine, worked with Medical University of Plovdiv leadership to map out a plan and schedule for paramedic training, meeting not only the standards required in Bulgaria but also those of the European Union. 

In February and March of that year, Dr. Wells, Wilson, and Dr. Baker spent several days teaching medical knowledge and hands-on skills at the Medical University of Plovdiv, integrating high fidelity simulation into paramedic education for the first time in Bulgaria.

In September 2023, the team, along with Texas Tech Health El Paso President Richard Lange, M.D., M.B.A., returned to Bulgaria at the end of the 10-month paramecic course and completed the hands-on education, successfully graduating all the paramedic students. By having trained paramedics on the ambulance or fire truck, patients with a medical emergency will experience a potentially lifesaving response time since every second counts in an emergency.

Dr. Wells and Wilson returned to Bulgaria in March 2024 and taught advanced cardiovascular life support (ACLS) provider courses for the first time in that country with the permission of the American Heart Association. In addition to teaching the ACLS course at the Medical University of Plovdiv, they expanded their teaching activities and provided the course at the Medical University of Sofia.

“At Texas Tech Health El Paso, we have a mission to share and advance medicine in the same direction,” Dr. Wells said. “In this case, instead of starting and staying with the simulation center, we also contributed to a program that trains the first generation of paramedics at the Medical University of Plovdiv, where, for the first time, U.S. experience and expertise was integrated into a paramedic course in Bulgaria.”

About Texas Tech Health El Paso

Texas Tech Health El Paso is the only health sciences center on the U.S.-Mexico border and serves 108 counties in West Texas that have been historically underserved. It’s a designated Title V Hispanic-Serving Institution, preparing the next generation of health care heroes, 48% of whom identify as Hispanic and are often first-generation students.  Established as an independent university in 2013, Texas Tech Health El Paso is a proudly diverse and uniquely innovative destination for education and research. With a mission of eliminating health care barriers and creating life-changing educational opportunities for Borderplex residents, Texas Tech Health El Paso has graduated over 2,400 doctors, nurses and researchers over the past decade, and will add dentists to its alumni beginning in 2025. For more information, visit ttuhscepimpact.org.