Public Safety Communications

The Prince William County Department of Public Safety Communications is accredited by the Virginia Office of Emergency Medical Services (OEMS) for emergency medical dispatch (EMD) and has been since the program’s inception. This program promotes protocols and continued training and education in EMD. This serves as acknowledgement from the OEMS of our EMD program meeting or exceeding standards established by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) and accepted and recognized by the American Society for Testing Materials (ASTM). All communications personnel whose job description includes call taking are certified as emergency medical dispatchers and complete a minimum 20 hours of annual continuing EMD/EMS communications education. We have a Quality Assurance and Quality Improvement process to assure EMD system compliance. This consists of call review and call monitoring. We provide an annual Quality Assurance/Quality Improvement report to the Virginia Office of Emergency Medical Services demonstrating a minimum average yearly score of 85% total compliance of emergency medical dispatch protocols being employed as part of an annual report submitted to OEMS documenting compliance with all program implementation and training guidelines set by OEMS for accreditation.