ProtoQuiz started during paramedic school, when I sustained an injury that forced me to take six months off in the middle of my clinicals.

During that time, I felt like I was forgetting everything I'd learned about local protocols. Those protocols had been incredibly helpful throughout school, and I wanted a way to keep studying them without making hundreds of flashcards by hand or repeatedly reading through a protocol book that was hundreds of pages long.

So I built ProtoQuiz.

It started as a pretty rudimentary tool, but it's since grown into several different projects, each addressing a different problem I've encountered in EMS.

The mobile app

ProtoQuiz's mobile app is built for EMTs and paramedics on iOS and Android. You upload your agency's protocol PDF and can study pharmacology, algorithms, and realistic patient scenarios. Every answer cites the page it came from, so you can check the information against the original source.

The idea is simple: make it easier to keep learning the protocols we use every day, long after paramedic school is over.

ProtoQuiz for Agencies

The agency version grew out of another problem I experienced firsthand. At the agencies where I've worked, people regularly talked about wanting to train more on shift. I wanted to do the same. But between the workload, competing priorities, and the lack of a good way to make it happen, we rarely followed through.

I realized that the problem wasn't necessarily a lack of interest in training. It was the barrier to actually doing it.

ProtoQuiz for Agencies is designed to lower that barrier. We build a continuous training program around your agency's own protocols, giving providers short, practical quizzes they can complete on shift or at their own pace. They can earn continuing education (CE) credit along the way, and training officers can see which topics their teams know well and where more work is needed.

After you send us your protocols, we can have the system set up in seven days. There's no need for your training staff to build a question bank, plan every session, or take on another ongoing administrative task. We bring the training to your providers, day or night, and make it easier to build training into the routine of working in EMS.

After all, what could be more relevant to our training than the protocols and guidelines we use to do our jobs?

EMS research

The third part of ProtoQuiz is a research project. Through user-uploaded protocols, I've gained access to a growing collection of EMS protocols from across the country. Naturally, I started wondering: How much do these protocols actually differ? How does the way EMS is organized vary from one place to another? And why are those differences there in the first place?

EMS is a fragmented profession. Who responds to an emergency, how the system is organized, what providers are authorized to do, and how they're trained can vary significantly depending on where you live. The differences aren't just between states. They can exist from one county to the next.

I want to document those differences and see what we can learn from them. There may be good reasons for some of the variation, and there may be practices worth adopting more widely. Before we can have meaningful conversations about standardization or improving the profession, we need a clearer picture of how things actually work today.

I believe EMS could benefit from greater consistency, stronger professional standards, and a more stable career path for the people doing the work. Understanding where we are now is one step toward figuring out how to get there.

Why I do this

ProtoQuiz is now helping EMS providers across the United States study the protocols they work under every day.

I believe that consistent, practical training makes us better at our jobs. It helps us retain what we've learned, recognize what we don't know, and approach patient care with greater confidence. I've experienced that firsthand in my own career, and I wanted to make that kind of learning easier for other providers, too.

I want EMS to be a profession that takes its own development seriously, where learning doesn't stop at graduation and where we keep working to improve throughout our careers.

That's why I built ProtoQuiz. I hope it helps you do your job a little better, too.

Jaden

Get in touch

Feedback from working EMTs and paramedics shapes the roadmap directly — most of what ships started as a user suggestion. Email support@protoquiz.com.