Advanced Airway Management and Adjuncts

1. Where your airway scope starts and stops

So let's start with the line that actually separates you from an EMT and from a Paramedic.

Skill	EMT	AEMT	Paramedic
OPA / NPA, BVM, CPAP, upper airway suctioning	✓	✓	✓
Supraglottic airway device	—	✓	✓
Waveform capnography — monitoring and interpretation	—	✓	✓
Suctioning through an existing ET tube	—	✓	✓
Endotracheal intubation, cricothyrotomy	—	—	✓
Needle decompression, gastric tube	—	—	✓

A lot of students assume CPAP is the AEMT skill. It's not. CPAP sits at EMT level in the national model. The 2019 National EMS Scope of Practice Model expert panel looked at supraglottic airways and waveform capnography. They put those two at AEMT on purpose. They declined to push them down to EMT.

So that's your line. You don't put a tube through the cords. You don't cut a neck. But you place a blind airway device, you read a capnography waveform, and you suction a tube someone else already placed. That's the whole AEMT airway job in one sentence, and everything below builds off it.