starting advice
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KEVD18
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JPINFV
Gadfly
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mycrofft
Still crazy but elsewhere
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Just go take the class!
Silly pudding.....
Silly pudding.....
JPINFV
Gadfly
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Ok, serious suggestions:
Ask around for a good anatomy and physiology text book.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales (Paperback)
by Oliver Sacks
http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Mistook-His-Wife/dp/0684853949
-Collection of clinical stories from Dr. Sacks carreer that includes both a clinican view and a physiological view. Don't get stuck on the physiological stuff, it can be dense at points. On the other hand understanding that a patient that might seem crazy might not be crazy is a very important lesson (anyone who has read this book will understand this).
The House of God
http://www.amazon.com/House-God-Classic-American-Hospital/dp/0440133688
Classic story of medical residency. Even though it's not an EMS book, the lessons and experiences the main character experiences are strangely relevant to prehospital care. I'm willing to bet that some of the "Laws of the House of God" will be taught in either your EMT-B class or during field training. Two classic examples of the Laws is
1. The patient is the one with the disease.
2. The first thing you do at a cardiac arrest is take your own pulse.
(as a side note, when you work in health care, the gomer laws will make a lot more sense. A fair amount of ambulance calls are for "gomers" that have successfully "gone to ground").
Ask around for a good anatomy and physiology text book.
The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales (Paperback)
by Oliver Sacks
http://www.amazon.com/Man-Who-Mistook-His-Wife/dp/0684853949
-Collection of clinical stories from Dr. Sacks carreer that includes both a clinican view and a physiological view. Don't get stuck on the physiological stuff, it can be dense at points. On the other hand understanding that a patient that might seem crazy might not be crazy is a very important lesson (anyone who has read this book will understand this).
The House of God
http://www.amazon.com/House-God-Classic-American-Hospital/dp/0440133688
Classic story of medical residency. Even though it's not an EMS book, the lessons and experiences the main character experiences are strangely relevant to prehospital care. I'm willing to bet that some of the "Laws of the House of God" will be taught in either your EMT-B class or during field training. Two classic examples of the Laws is
1. The patient is the one with the disease.
2. The first thing you do at a cardiac arrest is take your own pulse.
(as a side note, when you work in health care, the gomer laws will make a lot more sense. A fair amount of ambulance calls are for "gomers" that have successfully "gone to ground").
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I cannot agree with you more. Those two books are among my all time favorites-- and I believe drove my interest in health care. Along those same lines, I suggest anything written by Dr. Atul Gawande-- including his semi-recurrent articles in the New Yorker magazine and the New York Times, as well as his books, Better: A surgeon's notes on performance, and Complications: A surgeon's notes on an imperfect science.
If you liked Dr. Sacks's book, I suggest the series by V. S. Ramachandran, esp. Phantoms of the Brain.
I think every medical school student should read the House of God before starting residency-- written under a pseudonym, about a student from Harvard Medical School (BMS, Best Medical School) working at the House of God, or the Beth Israel Hospital in Boston, and written in the mid-70s. Nevertheless, the book is brilliant, and a great introduction to healthcare.
These books are for general edification, to prepare for an EMT class, I suggest, to reiterate what JPINFV said, you study your A&P, and maybe get your hands on an EMT-B textbook before class-- I suggest checking the library.