Educating Newbie EMTs
It’s that time year again were all getting ready to prepare for a new influx of EMS students. These EMT or paramedic students mean that part of our job is to train them to be able to handle the things we see on the street. Not all of these situations adrenaline junkie moments, not even most of them, but we do want them to appreciate that they’re involved in a life or death situation more often than they might be just working the desk job somewhere.
Realistic Training and EMS Education
In River Grove, Illinois there is a great article looking at their EMT program as part of their medical technology program at Triton College. They have a classroom program for EMT and I assume also for paramedic and a just a great article talking about how these instructors are preparing students for the field.
They are training them to work in ways that can work in the field. The students learn to work in pairs. The instructors also improve the training by giving them real life scenarios to deal with.
This may not seem unusual to all of us. This is probably how most of us went through our EMS training programs. I know I did, but, it again points out a great way to show our public exactly how we operate and exactly how we learn things. We learn to take care of them by practicing in this way.
Publicize EMS System Accomplishments
I hope you’ll take a look at this article and perhaps consider reaching out to your local training programs and getting a similar article in your local newspaper. This is a great way to educate the public about what we do and also to look at health careers in general. The article points out that many of the students who get their basic EMT not only get six college credits from the semester-long course, a lot of them go on to other careers in healthcare. A lot of them go on to become paramedics, but others become nurses and other medical and health professionals. I think you should look at this and then perhaps consider an article like this for your program in your area.
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Get the links and other information from this news item in this week’s episode of the MedicCast - Atrial Flutter Reviewed and Episode 297.
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One thing I’ve found concerning – I’ve had lots of student riders over the last few months – is that the students don’t seem to be learning the skills to do their jobs. Yes they can assess a patient, but they don’t seem to be emphasizing how to really CARE for a patient. Once the assessment and the initial treatment is done, they are not sure how to reassess, converse with or find common ground with the patients. How do other ‘teach’ these skills?
Thanks for the great articles! You always get me thinking!
Susan, thanks for your thoughtful comments. I always try to pass on my favorite conversation starters to students. Ask them where they’re from, children, grandchildren, teachers and best friends (for kids). A conversation can settle some mild anxiety, distract a patient from pain and shorten a long ride. I welcome others to comment and I’ll share this on the show soon, too.