Finished my first ride-along...

[sinus]

I just finished my first-ride along with the local volly FD/EMS. I wanted to join the department as an alternative route to getting an EMT-B cert; instead of taking it at a community college, I was thinking I could take it in-house and gain some experience at the same time. I've taken A&P in college, but no formal EMS training.

It was very interesting, but I look back on it and realize that I really didn't know what was going on, and although I didn't do anything unsafe or all that bad, I think I need to go on a lot more ride-alongs so I can get a better feel on how to act so I don't end up looking like an oddball from the start. Personally I wouldn't normally care what people think of me, but I need to have good rapport to join and do well.

How many ride-alongs should I go on before I am taken seriously enough to apply? Just a ballpark estimate. Or would it be a better idea to get FR or even EMT-B cert beforehand instead of getting it in-house?

 

[wanderingmedic]

I would just go for an EMT. The class will get you clinical exposure where you can actually do things. It would also allow you to probably learn more from your ride alongs because you know what's going on (or at least what should be).

 

[joshrunkle35]

Get an EMT-B cert. At that stage you'll have a basic understanding of how stuff works. Then you can begin your ride along learning. Otherwise you might not "see" or "hear" the same thing the EMT or medic heard, and you'll erroneously equate doing one thing with another.

You might, for example, see a patient who is "freaking out" and pregnant, and watch the EMT reposition her as the medic is drawing up mag sulfate...she suddenly has a seizure and you watch him give this drug and draw up some calcium chloride and set it to the side.

They both understood that this was pre-eclampsia that became eclampsia...

You might view this as "pregnant patients may have seizures after they freak out" or "magnesium sulfate is a drug to give to people who are having seizures"

They aren't necessarily going to verbalized everything they see, like "see how much edema she has? See how high her blood pressure is?"

You won't know about blood pressure difference in a pregnant female vs one who's not. You might hear someone say "that's really high" and they don't say: (for her, in her circumstances) but you might learn the wrong thing and equate future patients with similar numbers to have "high or low" blood pressure based on what you overheard without context.

You might learn that 60-100 beats per minute in pulse is normal, show up at a teenager's home, the outside of the house has a sign that says "Cory xyz live here, xyz high school track team". The patient has been lying in bed for 3 hours, they put a 3-lead on him and it shows normal sinus rhythm 98 beats per minute, the kid looks really normal to you, but your partners really start hammering into this kid about his medical history, family medical history, and drug use, and not in the normal way...your partners seem really concerned that something is wrong, and you're thinking, this kid is normal.

Take EMT-B. It will allow you to fully evaluate your surroundings and at bare minimum, even if you don't fully understand what illness the patient has, you are at a place where it can be easily explained. I honestly believe that ride time without a basic understanding might actually hurt, not help.

 

[sinus]

Thank you for your input. I will get my EMT-B at a community college then. When I said I didn't know what was going on, I was talking more specifically about the stuff outside of the patient encounter, such as how calls are dispatched, who goes out on a certain call and on which vehicles (ALS ambulance, BLS ambulance, fire engine, fly car?), whether ALS intercepts are used or is that for more rural areas, etc. but I guess that stuff varies from station to station too much to have a short answer.

 

[Tigger]

Thank you for your input. I will get my EMT-B at a community college then. When I said I didn't know what was going on, I was talking more specifically about the stuff outside of the patient encounter, such as how calls are dispatched, who goes out on a certain call and on which vehicles (ALS ambulance, BLS ambulance, fire engine, fly car?), whether ALS intercepts are used or is that for more rural areas, etc. but I guess that stuff varies from station to station too much to have a short answer.

Operational aspects are very agency specific but you will learn the basics in an EMT class. Hopefully with that knowledge you will have a better understanding of why certain resources are used in certain ways. But without the fundamental medical knowledge, you will struggle to participate in a meaningful while spending time on an ambulance.