Do you remember your ride alongs?

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DWemt28

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Hi! I just got done doing my ride alongs for my emt class. Due to my age I ended up getting stuck on IFT units, however I did manage to get a 911 call for a heart attack so that kinda made my day. What kind of stuff did you see or do?
 
EMT-A (basic) class ride along: not much.

For my nursing school ER rotation ridealong, being an EMT then for six years, I helped lift the litter etc.
 
Why are people calling these "ride alongs"? Do they not have clinicals or lack the understanding of what they are?

R/r 911
 
Ridryder911 said:
Why are people calling these "ride alongs"? Do they not have clinicals or lack the understanding of what they are?

R/r 911
Click to expand...

Ok look I know what a clinical is and I've made it this far so I obviously understand what I'm doing. Yes i did "ride along" with the ambulance crew and I did practice my skills, hence the name people call it. I am also going to do a hospital shift. I guess terminology is everthing to some.
 
I was the whitest of clouds on my ambulance clinical rotation. We did 2 IFTs: 1 was a pedi (although i did get to hear stridor) and one was a sternum Fx s/t unrestrained driver in an MVA and 2 911 calls from a nursing home: 1 was SOB w/o chest pain, the other was an elephant sitting on my chest.

Now then... my ER rotation...

got to work a hep C+ with 8 bleeding esophageal varices... accompanied her to ICU and gave report to ICU staff (i reported a suspected right mainstem ETT placement because I couldn't ausculate BS on the left side) they mistook me for an ER doctor...(when they found out I wasn't a doc about an hour later they looked like ghosts) got to watch an endoscopic sclerotherapy... that was the first day.

2nd day i got to work a CPR in progress... guy died, but he had gone unresponsive when his coworker gave some of (the coworker's) nitro, and then was down for 10 minutes sans cpr (and they had an AED in the office too :sad: )

just remember MONA doesn't great everyone at the door.
 
I finished my course a 1 1/2 months ago and started ride alongs just before class finished. YES,in Wisconsin they do call them ride-alongs. What are they called in other places? But anyway it is pretty sad to hope for something bad to happen. The first call I got was for a 2 car roll-over. It was so darned exciting and I was so pumped. Thank heavens both guys were okay. :rolleyes:
 
I remember probably 3 calls in the 100+ hours I did.


So, nope.
 
yeah finished clinicals so now im doing ride alongs....
so yeah i remeber my ride alongs like they happened last night at 2 in the morning..oh but they did...
midnight runs suck....
 
I had one mentally ill patient who was coughing up blood and mucus, an elderly lady who did not eat like she was suppose to, and and elderly man who fell and cut himself above his eye.
 
I did not have "ride along" clinical time on an ambulance, my 12 hours (note: NJ only requires 10) of clinical time was spent in a Satellite Emergency Dept. so no serious cases. Due to my low number of patients (I think I had 3) I spent a lot of the time learning how some of the lab procedures are done, what medics do when not on a call (work wise), and the inner workings of the ALS fly cars and how they are set up for that particular MICU. Clinicals isn't only a time to practice assesments but also to learn what happens to your patient after you transfer care.
 
Ridryder911 said:
Why are people calling these "ride alongs"? Do they not have clinicals or lack the understanding of what they are?

R/r 911
Click to expand...

Here we referred to clinicals as hospital ER rotations and ride alongs as clinical on a truck.

It's impossible to remember every call but I remember most of them, but I remember my ER patients more clearly because I spent mroe time with them. Favorite clinical by far was when I got to watch a cath and two stents placed. What an amazing thing modern medicine is.
 
Ridryder911 said:
Why are people calling these "ride alongs"? Do they not have clinicals or lack the understanding of what they are?

R/r 911
Click to expand...

Ride-alongs are with EMS on the road, clinicals are in the hospitals with the nurses.

And yes, I remember all of mine. Hell, they were only 2 years ago.
 
I called mine clinicals...as in EMS clinicals, ER clinicals, OR clinicals, etc. That was just the way I thought of them. I agree that the term "ride along" implies that the student is doing nothing but observing or just "riding along." Just another of those terms that needs to be changed. I remember the vast majority of my clinical time, both in and out of hospital. One of the more interesting ER clinicals was a guy who came in as a transfer from a smaller hospital. He was around 30 years old and his CC was chest pain. He had elevated troponin, CKMB, and myoglobin, along with some ST elevation. He ended up going up to the cath lab not long after he arrived at the hospital. Two of us were allowed to go up with him and observe the cath. Turns out he had multiple very small clots in the LAD and the small vessels branching off of it. The cardiologist gave him the lecture from hell...turns out he had been using cocaine prior to the onset of chest pain and the cocaine caused a vasospasm that caused the clots. So he got some thrombolitics and a nice stay in the hospital....and the lecture from hell. LOL I wonder if that changed his habits. ;)
 
The program that I attended called them Field rotations and Hospital rotations. I remeber a few that were sorta worth getting up that early for but I had more to do in the hospitals than in the field. I am such a effing white cloud that when I did my student time at the service I now work for they threatened to tie me up and lock me in the closet because there were no calls while I was there. One of my preceptors even put a smiley face on my paperwork because the only time we turned a wheel was to go to the grocery store!:rolleyes:
 
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