Keeping current on EMS knowledge

[RFDemt]

Hi, everyone -

I'm new to the forum, and I tried searching for this but I couldn't find anything good.

I just got my EMT in December. I work part-time as a firefighter/EMT and we get a decent amount of calls. We do EMS drills every other week to cover everything we need to review over the course of a year. But I can already tell that it's hard to retain all of the specifics of different EMS areas, and I don't want to lose my knowledge.

So can anyone recommend a good overall all review book, website, app, etc.? Everything I've found so far is either a textbook (too in depth) or a test prep guide (I don't need to study for a test). I want something I can pull out once in awhile, read, and get myself refreshed with the basics.

Does something like that exist?

Thanks!

 

[PaddyWagon]

A textbook with tabs and highlights would totally work, if you kept yours from class. I like it because I'm not active and will just flip to random pages and read that random bit; over time instant recall goes way up for me and that's kind of the point.

 

[KellyBracket]

One of the guys who posts here, Brandon, runs a great blog called EMS Basics. The title of the blog is a little misleading - he covers topics in the scope of the EMT-B, but dives a little deeper than, say, your text from class. So, it's for basics, but isn't basic. Sounds like what you're looking for.

 

[WuLabsWuTecH]

I used to go to school a loooooong ways away from where I volunteered. I kept the minimum requirements to stay active, but this could mean nearly 6 moths would go by without me taking a run. When I got back, I always cracked open the text for some of those things that we don't see that often and were appropriate for that time of year. Since my schooling was medicine related, I didn't really need to brush up on pt assessments/vitals etc, but I did look through things I didn't use that often. Some topics were trauma, fractures, OB, heat/cold emergencies etc. Whatever fit for the season was usually good and I always did OB because even at this point 5 years into my EMS career I still have not had an OB run.

Of course I also had to do things that review maps and run cards and such.

Then when I'm on downtime for my first few shifts, I just play the what if game when I'm bored. My run district is HUGE, so one of them might be: "Ok, there is a guy stroking out here. Which chopper is the closest? Ok the chopper was shot down by aliens (or just bad weather ), which hospital is my nearest stroke center and do I go there or just to the closest hospital?

Another one we just played out yesterday for kicks and giggles: I have a 6 year old *there* complaining of a fever. What's the appropriate treatment? Now she starts having a seizure, what do I do now? When having the seizure she thrashed and broke her arm (she thrashed really, really hard), what's the appropriate treatment for this? I now find out she actually has asthma and her breathing is going downhill, can I give albuterol? And if so, how much?

As you can probably tell, only the first part (the girl with sz's) was a real run my partner had. We made up everything else after that fact, but it's a good tool for refreshing yourself or in our case yesterday, training a probie.

Also remember to review your meds if you guys can use them in your state. Not knowing a contraindication can be a BIG problem!