Retaking an EMT-Basic Course

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Hookeyg

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Hi everyone,

I just recently finished the wilderness emt course offered by NOLS in Wyoming. It's an intensive one month course that combines the urban EMT basic and Wilderness first responder and allows graduates to take the NREMT following completion. They required us to get a testing average of 80 or higher which I achieved. On the last day, however, was the skills practicum. I passed everything on that except for splinting (apply a traction splint and improvised splint to a patient in under 12-15 minutes). Therefore I wasn't able to go on and take the NREMT.

It was a great course, I feel very confident that I could treat people and work in the front or back country as an EMT. I was just having a bad day and couldn't pull it together on that one skills station. If I had a little more practice or if it was a even a different day, I probably could of easily passed the course.

Now I'm down about $4000 and all I have is a wilderness first responder. At this point I know the whole curriculum and I'm about to go off to college in New York. I'm wondering if there is a cheap course that I could do easily and perhaps quickly (perhaps online), just so I could take pass the course and take the NREMT. I understand that online courses aren't an ideal way to learn to be an EMT, I just feel a little robbed that I spent all this money and devoted all this hard work into a tough program, and I didn't get my EMT cert out of it.

Thank you,
Dan
 
Wow, if you have most of it under your belt, why not go online? You will have to do skills in person, usually its a few Saturdays at a local training center.
4,000 is a lot to lose. Can you repeat the skills part? Or take an EMT refresher?
 
Thank you

Thanks for the quick responses.

Unfortunately, the way it works, it's one skills session day. If you fail a skill you get to retake it. If you fail the retake, then it's over. They did a great job preparing us to deal with patients, work on an ambulance, rescue people in different enviornments with different conditions, etc. However, very few people seemed to come out of the skills super confident. I guess they could of done a better job preparing us for the actual testing.

I guess theres no reason to complain about it now, nothing I can really do but retake the course. I'll look into the different programs you recommended fireWA1, thank you.

Have a great day,
Dan
 
Hookeyg said:
Thanks for the quick responses.

Unfortunately, the way it works, it's one skills session day. If you fail a skill you get to retake it. If you fail the retake, then it's over. They did a great job preparing us to deal with patients, work on an ambulance, rescue people in different enviornments with different conditions, etc. However, very few people seemed to come out of the skills super confident. I guess they could of done a better job preparing us for the actual testing.

I guess theres no reason to complain about it now, nothing I can really do but retake the course. I'll look into the different programs you recommended fireWA1, thank you.

Have a great day,
Dan
Click to expand...

I went to a fast-track EMT program which was 5 weeks of lectures (we did skills once or twice a week all day) and 2 weeks of clinicals in several hospitals and a 48 shift with the fire department.

The last day of class before clinicals I got kicked out of the program due to my health issues at the time.

I ended up getting half the money back and a reserved spot for the next course. So maybe you can talk to them and see if their willing to do something similar, or get a discount when you take the course again.

Hopefully you find a way to get your certification! I feel for you since I was in a similar situation.

Good Luck!
 
Hi nuro,

Thanks for the input!

Yeah it's hard when you put in the amount of time and money these courses require and come up empty. Since I'm about to head off to college, my plan is to hold off a little on the certification for now and maybe try to find a community college nearby or online program later on so I can just get the certification. I was at least able to get 9 college credit hours that I can transfer over when I head off to school. That sucks though that you had to leave on the last day. It sounds like you at least worked things out with the institution though.

Thank you,
Dan
 
Hookeyg said:
Hi nuro,

Thanks for the input!

Yeah it's hard when you put in the amount of time and money these courses require and come up empty. Since I'm about to head off to college, my plan is to hold off a little on the certification for now and maybe try to find a community college nearby or online program later on so I can just get the certification. I was at least able to get 9 college credit hours that I can transfer over when I head off to school. That sucks though that you had to leave on the last day. It sounds like you at least worked things out with the institution though.

Thank you,
Dan
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was pretty down for while after that, but that's life I guess. Hopefully you can get some of the money back (I got half of mine back).

I'm also in college, but somehow managed to get all my classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so hoping to maybe take a EMT class taught in the evening.

If you don't mind me asking, what college are you going to? You can PM me if you want. There's a great online program but depending on where you're going to college it might be difficult to attend the few days where the skills practicing is done.

Anyway, congrats on getting into whatever college you are going to :)
 
Haha thanks!

I'm going to hartwick college in Oneonta, New York. A lot of online courses seemed to be based in places like Texas or North Carolina (I guess a little bit of a commute haha). But if you know a good program nearby, I'm all ears.

Thank you,
Dan
 
Thanks Nuro!

I'll look into those, thanks taking the time to research.

Yeah I figured it be unlikely you'd be in a similar location haha.

Thank you,
Dan
 
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