Medic School:

When I set up this blog, I had two intentions:
1) I wanted to share the humor that I found in my daily life as a Husband and Father,
2) I knew I'd be starting Paramedic school somewhere and I wanted to be able to share that journey with anyone who might be considering the same - or wondering what Paramedic school entails.

Stepping into a Nationally Accredited Paramedic Program, I have the expectation that 2010 will be the hardest year of my life. Today, I'm full speed into Medic school, We're a little over a month into the "Didactic" portion of Paramedic School, "Didactic" is the classroom portion and it is followed by field internships.

I had the opportunity a while back to run my first scenario in front of the class as a "Lead Medic" - Meaning that I was in charge of the call, My patient and the other Paramedics that were assisting me. I did this as the rest of the class critiqued my work. Here was my scenario: It was a Trauma and should have been easy:

I was dispatched to a Motor Vehicle Collision, My patient had been extricated from his vehicle and was now laying on the ground, He was complaining of difficulty breathing and leg pain. The first thing I did was had one of my medics put him on Oxygen while the other held C-Spine. I began to do a rapid assessment of his body and noticed that he his right arm was broken, he complained of pain when I assessed his chest and his left leg had an exposed femur break. I had one of my medics control the bleeding on his leg as I auscultated (listened via stethoscope) his lungs, The Right lung had no sounds. To keep the story short, I felt pretty good about the scenario (based upon my current knowledge) But: I screwed up and missed a lot of vital things: My mind was all over the place. I learned that we've all got a long way to go, However, More importantly: I learned a TON from this simple small scenario, namely that its not often going to be the same thing and that's why it is important for even the BLS (Basic Life Support) skills to become second nature..

For anyone wondering what Paramedic school consists of: Here's the abridged version of what we're currently going through:
The book we study out of is 2000 pages thick and it comes with 4 additional books, We are expected to read every paragraph of every page and retain what little we can out of reading. We are also expected to memorize (Verbatim), all of the drugs that a Paramedic can legally carry along with what action they perform, Indications and Contraindications, Adult and Pediatric dosage rates, Overdose information, Side effects, etc, Lucky for me, We memorize just a few every week and then we slowly integrate them into our scenarios.

I hope that I don't come across as a complainer because the information that we are learning is simply amazing, I've waited a really long time for my opportunity to learn it and I love it all... (Yes, even the hours of mind-numbing reading)