It's Been a WHILE

Well, it's been a little over three years since I last posted on this blog.  I guess I got so wrapped up in being a new paramedic that I completely forgot to record my experiences here.  So, to catch you up, I am still a paramedic but also function in the role of a field training officer.  Field training officers are the first point of contact for new employees once they've been released from the classroom portion of their new hire onboarding process.  The new employees do third-rides and one-on-one rides with us for a minimum of four weeks.

Anyway, as you can imagine, a lot has happened over the last three years and I will do my best to include past and present experiences in the blog posts to come.  For now, I'll summarize the last three years of my career.

Since I became a paramedic, I have run nearly 4000 calls, about 25 of them have been cardiac arrests or obvious deaths, almost 200 calls for legitimate respiratory distress, 120 chest pain/cardiac-related calls, and 80 major traumas, including shootings, stabbings, assaults, and car wrecks.

Thankfully, through those calls, whether serious or not serious, medically necessary or not medically necessary, I can say I have learned a lot.  When training a new employee, one of the most important points I like to make is that as paramedics and EMTs, we can learn from everyone and everything.  We can learn from the patient who isn't breathing, the patient who's bleeding out, the patient who has threatened to kill us, the patient who has actually kicked, punched, slapped, spit at or tried to wrestle us.  We can learn from the patient who's complaining of toe pain, or the one who doesn't really have a complaint and just needs a warm place to sleep for the night. We can learn from the patient with chest pain and an abnormal EKG, or the one's who have extremely diminished lung sounds, or none at all.  We can learn from the bodies left behind at the scene of an accident, or the patients who survived the accident.  We can learn from everyone and everything!

Often, my new employees chuckle when I mention that they can learn from those patients with lower acuity complaints, but there really isn't anything funny about it.  I can honestly say I've learned from those patients.  Whether I've learned some aspect of patient care, or something about documentation, or how I, as a human, relate to other humans, I've learned something.  And, when I, or any other EMS provider feels they've learned all there is to learn, it's time to leave the profession.

In fact, one of the things that has kept me in EMS is the knowing that every single day can present a learning opportunity.  I'm thankful that I have not yet, and hopeful that I will not in the future take for granted this wonderful aspect of my journey through prehospital medicine. 

Well, this post is long enough for now.  Next time I will write about some interesting cases I have been confronted with since I became a paramedic.