.....believing legal IFR currency confused as being IFR Proficiency is a dead certain killer of EMS crews.
Crab and Shy.....I fully and completely agree with your thoughts on the matter.
The situation is the Training Captain shows up at the remote base...does some ground school maybe...an hour of flight...or so....then in the most common scenario...does a check ride and you are now Legal, Current, and in most folk's mind...."Proficient" to conduct IFR flight following IIMC.
If that happens to be your trusty steed with no SAS, no Auto-Pilot, and you happen to be single pilot.....it all too often means a tragedy is about to happen.
You want to have some fun....attend a Safety Meeting of Active EMS Pilots and ask simple questions and watch them start squirming.
My favorite is along the lines of this.....
Do you carry a Sectional Map (standard issue 1:500,000 VFR Nav Map) on each flight?
How often do you use the Map while in flight?
How often do you use the Map at Night in flight?
If one starts by asking them to respond by holding their hands up....by the time they answer the last question there are darn few hands up if they are honest.
Reading a Map at night in an single piloted unstablized helicopter...with the basic issued factory lighting...when you are in your 50's (think "glasses" here)....is not a simple task. If you added NVG's to that....do you look under them....or flip them up to read the map?
Do we then rely upon the GPS to find our way around? What if it is just a standard unit and does not show a map with obstacles identified?
Most EMS units will advertise a 150NM radius of operation....there is a lot of ground in a cirlce that big...to be flown on "local knowledge" standards!