Hey guys,
Has anyone heard anything about the Stony Brook Paramedic program? Reputation, quality, etc.... Has anyone been through the program? Experiences, comments, etc...
No.
What was it like going through medic school? Did you like it? Challenging? Time consuming? What were the hardest parts of the class?
Time consuming. My program was 0800-1700 M-F x 2 years, 1000 hours on the ambulance, 400 in hospital. I worked full-time in parallel.
The first month was overwhelming, until I realised I had to limit what I read about, and prioritise on the core areas. In general, I'd say the classes were less academically difficult than first year university classes, but involved a lot more lecture time. It was the volume of information to absorb in the time that was challenging more than the difficulty level.
Practicum was most difficult, as I was working and doing practicum in the same service, resulting in a 2 days 5 nights schedule for several months, for 90 hours in an 8 day cycle, only half of which was paid. I developed a poor attitude towards the end, and 10-15 kg of fat from constant junk food. My car looked like I lived in it.
Should I get some experience riding before I jump to ALS or go right into
the class (beginning in August).
Get some experience now until August. Try and work part-time during school. Unless there's somewhere you can go and run BLS 911 response, I can't see delaying a year. Even then, unless you're ridiculously young, I'd say do medic school.
What was the hardest part of the course?
See above.
What course material (academics) did you find the most challenging to grasp?
Maybe the brief period of time we talked about Swan-Ganz lines, but that could have been an instructional issue. I don't remember it being hard. I remember being frustrated that we seemed to spend the first 6 months basically reviewing EMT and adding detail. In retrospect, this was time well spent, and things I considered "re-learning BLS", were actually important, like "learning to do a half-*** decent patient assessment".
About how much time a night was spent studying/rotations? Did you ever get any "free" time?
At the start of the course, several hours a night studying. Rotations were primarily spaced between class time, so we didn't really go to class, then go to a rotation. At least not that often.
I had very very little free time. This was the result of deciding to go to school when I wasn't really financially set up for not having to work a lot. If I could do it again, I'd work less.
Any recommendations on how to get a head start in the course?
Make sure your basic math is solid, otherwise remediate yourself now. The math is very simple, but it gets a lot of people who've been out of school for a while. Address any major issues in written English.
Take A&P, as suggested. Review ECGs. Work through a medical terminology text.
I should also add that many of the courses I thought were pointless filler when I took medic school, like Law, Statistics, Research Methodology, Presentation skills, etc. ended up being incredibly useful later on. I was really surprised at how much better I became at presenting just due to medic school.
