The law in Kansas states that, essentially, you need to be more than a good driver to take the wheel of an ambulance.

Makes sense enough. A single medically trained pro riding in the back could be sketchy. It’s easy enough to imagine a medical emergency where having a second certified person could be the difference between life and death.

But what if your ambulance covers the state’s back roads in a county with a shrinking population and it’s hard enough to find a reliable volunteer driver, much less someone certified for emergency medical services?

So now some of the people trying to keep their ambulance operations alive are asking the state to relax the rules. Let an ambulance driver be just a driver.

Similarly, there’s a push to let nurses with certain advanced training operate without oversight contracts that link them to physicians. Again, it’s of particular interest in rural parts of Kansas where doctors, like volunteer drivers with emergency medical certification, are in short supply.

Resistance will come from people who represent medically trained ambulance drivers and physicians. They’ll argue sincerely that patients could suffer. But they’ll also be motivated at some level by a threat to their abilities to make a living.

In rural Kansas, those questions can be tough.

Scott Canon, Kansas News Service managing editor