Staying Frosty

firefite said:
Real patients is also going to be the best but some people in don't have that opinion. For example in my area there isn't any places where you can volunteer. If you have your NREMT then you can't do ride outs at most ambulance companies. So you are left with no choice but to practice on non sick patients.

If I wasn't employed I would be SOL. I'm to old for the fire departments explorer program. The volunteer program/reserve program is on freeze. Hospitals don't allow EMT volunteers (unless you want to make beds only and see no patient care). I have my NREMT so I can't ride out with ambulance companies.
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Again I agree, I just think it is important to realize that practicing one's skills on healthy people is capable of breeding false confidence that can bite one during actual patient content.
 
I appreciate the feedback, folks, and I can understand how vague a question I might have posed. While there may not be much to basic trauma care in the grand scheme of things, I guess I'm just a little paranoid that I'm going to forget what I learned, considering the only time I ever used it was for practical nights in class. As the saying goes, "If you don't use it, you lose it," or so said Steve Carrell. It's hard to fight my squirrelish instincts, since I'm new and all, I just don't want to be standing there, looking like an idiot not being able to do something that I learned in EMT school, but hadn't really got to use in the field yet.

That being said, yes, I do have a girlfriend, and I made great use of her during EMT school, Giggity x 2.
 
Tigger said:
Again I agree, I just think it is important to realize that practicing one's skills on healthy people is capable of breeding false confidence that can bite one during actual patient content.
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As opposed to doing no practice at all?
 
I am not suggesting that any practice is better than no practice. I am suggesting that fake experience is just not that valuable past the skills testing level.

I can ask my patient to make up a scenario, they can tell me ok I have chest pain for 40 minutes. In that case what am I really going to learn other than "turn to page 9 in the protocol book."

Practicing splinting and applying dressings can only go so far... There is next to nothing to it and honestly most hospitals hate when we put cling over a wound the way we practice it. No one enjoys cutting off 10 feet of dressing to see what is going on underneath.

Now if you have a dynamic training tool such as a laerdal simulator manikin, that is another story. Absolutely use that. It is as close to real as you are going to get. (I do not work for or endorse leardal)

The best thing you can do with free time is read and enhance your medical knowledge. Odds are you won't forget what to do when confronted with a standard injury, but, when someone out of the norm occurs, maybe you have read about it and at a minimum can devise some form of treatment.
 
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firefite said:
Real patients is also going to be the best but some people in don't have that opinion. For example in my area there isn't any places where you can volunteer. If you have your NREMT then you can't do ride outs at most ambulance companies. So you are left with no choice but to practice on non sick patients.
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I repeat myself. First, dialysis transport patients ARE real patients.

Second of all... they are VERY sick. They need to be plugged into a machine for 4 hours a day, 3 days a week, just so that they don't DIE.
 
Practice with your partner in slow minutes; verbalize what you would do on the way to a scene to pick up your dialysis patient.
Practice actually doing it while posting in a park or somewhere similar: at some parks I would actually ask people there if I could borrow an older child (or younger one) to practice with: think families at parks. Worked great, kids liked it and parents could watch and the kids wouldn't be waiting and getting in the way of the BBQ cooking.

Sometimes we would actually get more trauma in the IFT than at the FD; 1st on scene of MVC's; and grandma fell at ECF.
 
Jon said:
I repeat myself. First, dialysis transport patients ARE real patients.

Second of all... they are VERY sick. They need to be plugged into a machine for 4 hours a day, 3 days a week, just so that they don't DIE.
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But these patients are usually not TRAUMA patients.... Which is what the OP wanted practice in.
 
Volunteer in an ER.
 
firetender; said:
Volunteer in an ER.
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I disagree with this. Most volunteers are running around making beds and handing out food. Even those hired as techs aren't doing much assessment, though you get to at least see pathology. You'd be better off volunteering with a fire department, ski patrol, search and rescue, or ambulance. Something that gets you real patient contact.

But at the end of the day, if you want to be good at treating 911 patients, you have to work 911. So you should be working on getting hired where you can work 911 if that's what you want to do.
 
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