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CORVALLIS, Ore. - The United States may be changing rapidly demographically, but if you suffer an injury or illness that requires treatment by an emergency medical technician, the odds are that nine out of 10 times that EMT will be white.

That figure puzzles educators and training evaluators - especially in light of new studies that point out that minority EMTs have high job satisfaction and experience strong salary equity, according to Darlene Russ-Eft, an associate professor of education at Oregon State University.

"This has been an area of concern, especially since EMT services are generally based within the community," Russ-Eft pointed out. "What that means is that in minority communities, it frequently is not minorities who are providing first-response care in their community. That doesn't necessarily affect the quality of care, but it is a missed opportunity to provide high-paying, high-satisfaction jobs to minorities in those communities."

Most emergency medical technicians also are male, according to Russ-Eft, who is part of a team working with the National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on a long-term study of EMTs. The only education faculty member on the team, Russ-Eft presented her findings on EMT demographics and job satisfaction this weekend at the international meeting of the Academy of Human Resource Development in Columbus, Ohio.

Much of Russ-Eft's work focuses on instructor quality. A nationally known training and program evaluator, she became especially interested in the work of EMTs in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

"When you look at the level of first-response needed in such a drastic event, it naturally raises the question of how prepared are our first-responders," Russ-Eft said. "That's one of the goals of our long-term study and we don't have all of the answers yet. But one thing that we've found is that the quality of the instructors and the instructional material is critical to how well-prepared EMTs feel.

"So we believe that more attention and effort needs to be made in improving both the instruction and the quality of instructional material during training."

The long-term study - known as LEADS, for Longitudinal Emergency Medical Technician Attributes and Demographics - was in its seventh year of data collection in 2005 and will continue.

The next step in the research, Russ-Eft said, is to determine whether the basic training is sufficient preparation for first-response situations.

"In our surveys, we asked EMTs about areas they considered themselves least prepared, and the most frequent response was in the areas of childbirth and pediatric care," Russ-Eft said. "That's natural, given the dominance of males in the field.

"There also is speculation that there is a fairly high level of discomfort in dealing with issues of dementia, so future research is needed to confirm whether this is true," she added. "If it is - given the advancing age of our American society - it would suggest that we may need to increase our training for EMTs to deal with all aspects of deteriorating bodies, both physical and psychological."

The study found that there was no difference in career success, job satisfaction or salary rates between whites and minorities. Women also had high job satisfaction, but their pay was generally lower, though the gap was closing. Some of that could be tied to experience and training, the researchers said.

"There are generally two predictors of career success," Russ-Eft said. "One is to be competitive, to seek the education, training and experiences that will take you to the top - and that generally leads to more money. The second predictor is through nurturing and mentorship; establishing strong relations with supervisors and peers leads to high job satisfaction, but not necessarily more money."

Prior to joining the OSU faculty, Russ-Eft was director of research services at AchieveGlobal, Inc. She also was director of research at Zenger-Miller, the largest training organization in the world.

Russ-Eft and colleagues Philip Dickison, of the National Registry of EMTs, and Roger Levine, of the American Institutes for Research, recently published a study about EMT instructor quality in the December 2005 issue of the International Journal of Training and Development.