NREMT-B Practical Exam

[EMTTheo16]

Hi everyone,
Today, I took my National Registry practical exams. I passed my Medical station, and my Random Skill, which was Airway, with flying colors, but I failed Trauma. I went ahead and retested, and my patient was a construction worker who was electrocuted and fell off a roof. I noticed burns on the patients hands, and when I went to check PMS, I asked the patient to squeeze my fingers. Do you think the evaluators failed me for that? I'm really nervous.
Thank you!!

 

[Jim37F]

What did THEY say you failed for? I would find it hard to believe you got zero feedback whatsoever beyond "you failed". Even if you only got a vague "you failed for checking the Critical Fail of 'failure to manage the Pt as a competent EMT'" is still a reason that we can discuss.

For what it's worth, personally I highly doubt you failed for that reason. Not unless your program explicitly stated "don't check CMS on electrically burned hands". Absent that, I'd be more willing to say they'd fail you for not checking CMS than checking it, burns or no.

There's plenty of other reasons you could have failed the NREMT Trauma assessment....did you take longer than the 10 min time limit to complete the skill? Not take C-spine/SMR or not place the Pt on high flow oxygen?* get distracted treating the burned hands instead of managing a life threat (i.e. dis they describe your patient having labored/shallow/toofast/slow reputations but you only applied an NRB instead of a BVM?) Bounce around the skill sheet out of order, sound not confident with lots of "ums" amd pauses, forfet where on the flow sheet you are or otherwise act in a not-smooth manmer that could convince your proctor you didn't study and didn't really know what they were doing? Etc etc etc.

 

[EMTTheo16]

At the beginning of the test day, they said they would not tell us why we failed any station. I know I failed my first station because I didn't insert an airway adjunct when the patient needed it. I was going too fast I think. But my second attempt I think was spot on. I conducted my entire assessment in about 7-8 minutes, went straight down the sheet as smoothly as I could, and treated every injury as I found it. I think Im just psyching myself out.

 

[DrParasite]

What did THEY say you failed for? I would find it hard to believe you got zero feedback whatsoever beyond "you failed". Even if you only got a vague "you failed for checking the Critical Fail of 'failure to manage the Pt as a competent EMT'" is still a reason that we can discuss.

many/most NREMT exam stations WON'T tell you why you failed. all you are told is pass or fail. Their reasoning is this is evaluation time, not education time. So if you fail, that's your evaluation, and you need to go to your instructor to learn how not to fail (get educated). Some instructors are less strict than others when it comes to this.

I don't agree with it, but that's how they operate.

 

[TheEleventhHour]

Were you given a paper for evaluation? When I tested we used FISDAP so if you failed a Skill you could see what you did wrong.

 

[EMTTheo16]

No, the evaluators had everything. They told us nothing. Not even our times. Is that how it usually is?

 

[DrParasite]

if they do paper evaluations, they will keep everything and submit it to the course coordinator, so you don't get to see anything.

if they do fisdap with electronic evaluations, you will get to see everything, including their notes.

it's all up to how the testing site chooses to operate.

 

[EMTTheo16]

They used paper evaluations. We have to wait till they post online.

 

[EMTTheo16]

Heard back today! Ive passed my practicals, and already scheduled my written exam for next week!!

 

[Jim37F]

Balls about the no feedback thing....like how on earth are you supposed to teach students about what they're doing wrong to correct it if you're not allowed to give any feedback?? But sadly, it seems as if that's the same route my FD's internal EMT class is going for our NREMT skills next week -_-

But ay way, congrats on passing

 

[EMTTheo16]

Thanks Jim

 

[TheEleventhHour]

Congrats!