Cervical Collars: Window Dressing or Medical Treatment?

An EMS physician from Florida just removed cervical collars from his ambulances and proclaimed, “cervical collars are a cancer”, but are they? Should we all stop using them or is there a middle ground? We don’t want to cause harm to our patients or angst for our EMS clinicians, so how should we move forward with the care of our patients? Just because the literature doesn’t show benefit, doesn’t mean that there is universal harm. And most importantly, EMS is just one small part of the house of medicine. How should we advance care without creating controversy for our clinicians?