Book excerpt: This book is the update to the Essentials of Paramedic Care, 2nd edition, which is the first text program to take students beyond the skills necessary to practice as a paramedic and into the underlying principles upon which those practices are based. Correlated to the U.S. Department of Transportation's 1998 National Standard Curriculum for EMT-Paramedic, this book provides the background content and skills coverage required for paramedic education.