AHE 190 EMERGENCY MED TECH 3.6
BIOL&241 HUMAN A&P 1 4.0
ENGL258 LIT OF AMERICAN CULTURE 3.9
HUM105 INTERCULTURE COMMUNICATION 3.9
A 4.0 in A&P. Wow. I’m pretty happy with that.
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There’s a great “best of” blog post list that was compiled at “A Chronic Dose“.
Well worth the read.
I was reading a message board about an accelerated EMT-B course that was conducted in 14 days. One poster claimed the course was way too short and that it “scared the hell out of him”.
Then there was the follow up post from a former medic: “I don’t think they (EMT-Bs) should be allowed on the ambulance at all, but if we are going to have ‘”drivers”‘, lets make sure they are qualified ‘”drivers”‘.
Yikes.
I don’t know if some paramedics have a God complex or they just like to stir the pot.
Guess what guys? Not every call is an ALS call and not every patient needs a paramedic.
To me, it make sense to have the medics free for the actual “emergencies” and have the EMT-B run the BLS and transfer calls.
But what do I know?
Yeah, we know it hurts.
We had our first snow of the Winter …
These were taken around 7:45am, while walking the dawgs, on December 14, 2008.
I love the contrast of the pink and blue sky in the second photo.
I’ve been reading Peter Canning’s blog for a while. Peter is a Paramedic in Hartford Connecticut, and he’s got a gift. Not only does he seem to be a good, caring medic … but the guy can write. He’s published a few books full of “stories of the street” and I find a little pleasure in knowing that I know where he’s going when he mentions places in Hartford. I know what it’s like to talk to the North Central C-Med dispatcher on Med 10. It’s familiar. It’s what I want to do and yeah, the stories are exciting. There’s a little adrneline junkie in all of us, otherwise, we’d be taxi drivers.
But, I read one of his posts called “The Line” earlier this evening, and I think it really summed up why I want to be a medic. It’s not because I want to be the guy in charge, or the medic that always gets the tube. Instead, I want to continue to learn from every call and give future patents the gift of past experience.
Learning how to be a better medic every day. That’ll be my goal.
I took the “written” portion of the test this morning. I laugh, because the only thing you have to write on the test is your name and many of the questions are written like this:
33) You are called to the scene of a 28 year old female with a slight shortness of breath. After your assessment, the appropriate treatment is:
a) hitting her in the face with a bat.
b) throwing her headfirst into the truck and driving really fast.
c) applying Oxygen and transporting to the appropriate hospital.
d) shooting her with a tranquilizer dart.
e) All of the above are correct.
Hmmm. Let me think about that one.
Anyway, I talked to the lead instructor after the test and she told me that everyone, to a student, had major trouble with major trauma. I don’t think anyone passed it on the first go’round. That makes me feel better.
This comes next…
I just have to wait three months for the state to do the paperwork. It wasn’t this difficult when I got certified the first time around.
A couple of days ago, I wrote this:
I’ve been reading EMS message boards. I always see a bunch of posts about “the test”. How the thought of it is making them nervous. How they failed the last test twice. How hard the practicals are. How difficult the written test was… Amazing.
If you can’t master the basic EMT skills after 3 months of class, there’s something really wrong. It’s not rocket science.
OK. Maybe I was a little too cocky. I didn’t fail my practicals, but did come pretty close.
When the practical testing started, my partner and I jumped into it and we smoked both the major and minor medical stations. I mean, we were on point. It was flawless. We worked like a well oiled machine. High Fives all around. (Jake, you are the MAN!)
Then came the major trauma station.
Our patient was a guy that had a wall collapse on him at a construction site. I was holding C-spine and was trying to talk to the PT. From where I was crouching, it looked as though things were going well, but I was stuck at the head. The other guys were thorough, did a good exam but just took too long to get the guy rolled on to the board and get moving. The instructor stood up and shook his head. “Thanks for playing.”
OK, so we went back out into the classroom to regroup, clear our heads and work on team strategy. We took another shot at major trauma and I screwed it up. Yep, it was all me. While I was bagging the PT, a car vs. ped, I didn’t maintain c-spine. WTF? What was I thinking? Am I an idiot? Apparently, yes. Not maintaining c-spine. What a rook mistake.
OK, so later on we did wind up making good on the major trauma and rocked it… shortly after that a different partner and I went in to do the minor trauma station and that went fine as well… but, that fact remains, I did something really stupid, screwed up the team and almost kept us from passing the final. I’ve been kicking myself for two days.
The written test is tomorrow and I’m sure I’ll do fine. I’m just upset that I made such a dumb, newbie mistake.
OK. Rant over. Now I’ve vented and feel better. A little.
As I consider my next steps, I’ve been thinking more and more about RT school in the fall.
I also wonder about coupling RT with a paramedic cert. It might help with getting a CCT job.
And finally, I’d like to be the guy that’s able to help that kid that can’t breathe. (I remember how scary it was when I was a kid with asthma.)
Hmm. I guess it’s worth looking into.
Anone have thoughts?
More bad news in radio-land. I found this message posted on a friend’s Facebook page. Even if is just a rumor (which I think it might be) it’s still a sobering thought and a frank look at how sad the business of radio has become.
(And I did not write this… it’s simply a repost.)
30 DAY WARNING IF YOU WORK FOR CLEAR CHANNEL
They are getting ready to unload a majority of the programming payroll in the company. Moved budget process to Jan so they could do it with Bain. If you work in a non-essential programming or talent position in a market beyond Top 25-50, please beware. This will also effect production, traffic, sales, IT and other positions where duties could be handled by one person.
Air talent – They are going to feed formats to above 25-30 top markets from San Antonio and other markets to start in 2009. PD’s and jocks in these stations will be let go. OM’s will program the entire cluster.
Make your plans now. They will not be paying giant severances as promised in July. That meant if you lost your job because of the transfer of power from Mays to Bain, you would be paid large. Tom Taylor found this out last week and it’s leaking out from VP’s in the company. In Fresno where I was let go, this means all of those duplicate traffic positions, assistant IT, production people, traffic, news and promotions assistant will be absorbed by others. Most of the Fresno stations will be ordered to be voice tracked sooner than later
Don’t let them call you into an office, you need to have the upper hand and have another job and quit on them before they blast you. Again this isn’t coming from me, I like the group there and don’t want to see them get caught in a whirlwind.
