Captain Emt-B: Fill & Download for Free

Question: What was hard about paramedic school (if you attended). What state are you an EMT-B in (I’m in Texas), are you nationally registered? What do you do now and why? (Nurse/ paramedic/ neither). Any advice for 20 y/o me in community college?A lot of questions ran into one, but lets go!What was hard about paramedic school: I never went through paramedic, what was hard about AEMT though? Getting all the required patient contacts.What state are you in: Wisconsin, have been for my entire career.Are you nationally registered: Sadly no, I haven’t had national since 2008. My initial reasoning for letting it lapse was “Lol Idc. I’ll get it back once I become a paramedic anyway and then maintain it if I’m required to.” Yeah… I’d be in Duluth by now.What do you do now and why: EMS Captain in charge of training, cause that was the position that was open and it pays the bills (Not the most glorious answer, but it is what it is).Any advice: If you’re not already an EMT…. don’t…I mean I can’t stop you to be honest but there are so many other things you could do that would preserve your sanity better… otherwise? Make sure you have an escape plan or at least have ways to “get away” from work.

My unit served early in the Afghanistan war, 2003-2004. National Guard Army aviation unit.On an individual level I thought that my unit was much better than our active duty counterparts:Our pilots had much more experience in terms of hours and real world flight time, almost all flew either full-time for the Guard or in the civilian world. Our average pilot had 4000 hours. The average pilot in the active competent deployed at the time only had around 1000 hours. Additionally our pilots had a lot of experience doing real world missions state side because that's what National Guard aviation does.Our flight medics were all civilian paramedics/fire fighters. The active component medics were only certified to the EMT-B level(after many years of saying they need higher certification the active component is finally requiring more training for flight medics). Our flight medics had much more experience than the active guys. This was still early in the GWOT so the active guys didn't have nearly the hands on of our home town ambulances riders and firemen. This particular MOS was probably the Guard's biggest advantage.Our mechanics were much more experienced than the active component mechanics. We could complete heavy maintenance evolutions due to this experience much quicker and conduct smart trouble shooting to fix problems faster. Our Guard mechanics were usually full-time mechanics of some sort in the civilian world (the best helicopter mechanic I ever met made $60 a hour fixing big rigs for his civilian job) The active component mechanics were overall much less experienced and in a garrison environment they spent very little time actually working on aircraft due to the myriad of other training requirements the active army puts on individual soldiers.Support soldiers were about even in terms of effectiveness. The active guys knew how to get stuff done easier working with higher because we were assigned to an active division.Our equipment, H-60 helicopters, was not as new as the active component model. This was partially due to the way the army resourced aircraft for the MEDEVAC mission but also because my state's congressional delegation did not place a high priority on fighting to get us better equipment. Active army usually has the newest equipment, as they should since they are usually the first to go.Where I saw the biggest shortfall was commissioned officer leadership. This is largely depends on the actual individuals that get assigned to leadership positions in both components. For the most part though I thought the active duty field grade officers (Major and above) were way more squared away than the Guard officers of the same rank. This makes sense since the active guys had been on active duty and lived/breathed the army only for their whole post college lives. The Guard commissioned officers brought their civilian experience to the table but the army really likes the Military Decision Making Process (MDMP) as way to plan things and our field grades weren't as experienced with it. Our leadership was better at thinking outside the box, but when you are attached to an active unit were the controls are in place for active units with less experience at the individual level that will only take you so far. Another aspect of the Guard is that senior commissioned officer leadership can be very political. So individuals sent on deployments in leadership positions might not be the best just the most well contected. The active component seemed like more of a meritocracy.For company grade commissioned officers (Captain and below) it was pretty much a wash, although our Commissioned pilots were better at flying because they were trained by our warrants with all that flying experience discribed above. Both Guard and Active complement company grade officers had their share of stellar performs and dirtbags.Quantifying actual performance in MEDEVAC is difficult because I don't have any stats and most calls are reponded to and taken car of. I will say that we took some calls that the active guys would not because our pilots were more experienced.Overall I think National Guard Army aviation provides the taxpayer a much better value than the active component. That being said a good portion of aviation needs to be in the active component because it takes a guard unit a little while to get trained up. (Six weeks in the case of this deployment)For Army units besides aviation I think that the effectiveness of Guard units depends on their specific mission. Active duty infantry units are going to be better because there isn't a civilian equivalent for infantry. Military Police, Aviation, Transportation/Logistics, Engineers, Medical, and Maintenance units based on my experience should be as good or better than Active component units because those jobs are very similar to civilian positions.

How to work in an ALS system.I did well in the program, learned the skills, aced the tests, nailed the NREMT, and then when I started the job I immediately realized I knew almost nothing about actually working in the field.I didn't need to do any long in depth exams of new patients, or know about the circulatory system, or diagnose all sorts of random things based on all the physiology I learned. Yes, that was useful information in general and I'm glad I learned it, but none of it was necessary or ever useful to me on the job.What I needed to know, and what I don't even recall hearing about needing to know let alone actually learning about, was:How to spike a bagHow to put on a 12-leadHow to work the monitorHow to draw up medsHow to get blood from a catheter on to the glucose stripHow to tell firefighters they were doing something incorrectly (used this one a lot)What all the different kinds of bandages and drugs and needles and tools were calledMedic - “Hand me a koban wrap!” Me - “… a what?”How to give radio reportsHow to handle psych patientsHow to write reportsHow to work for 36 hours straight and maintain some semblance of sanityHow to drive an ambulanceHow to drive an ambulance with lights and sirens (code 3)How to get the smell of SNIFFs out of my hair and clothesHow to go from an hour long attempt to save a life all the way over to giving a drunk a ride to the hospital ten minutes later without screaming at them for wasting valuable resourcesEtc etc etcGranted, a lot of the training they gave us with regards to managing traumas was helpful, although the classroom setting never got close to mirroring the reality of what it was like to handle it in the field with blood and/or other fluids all over your hands.I was able to adapt, just barely, but it was fuckin rough. I eventually ended up working with a training captain so I trained a fair number of new EMTs, and many of them failed entirely for exactly the reasons I've pointed out: very little of the schooling we're given comes close to preparing us for the reality of even a low volume retirement station. It's very much like training someone to be an English professor and then expecting them to immediately be able to do assist in open heart surgery.The inverse of this was that I had a few people in my EMT class who failed out because they couldn't maintain high enough grades on the physiology and anatomy and drugs and etc that we had to learn, even though they absolutely excelled with the hands on stuff that we actually would need in the field. Those people would have been at least as good at the job as I was, and they were failed out over information they would almost certainly have never needed in the real world. Seems like an outrageous waste to me.