Life of a Trainee Paramedic

Today was one of the not-so-good Clinical Education days.  These have been my favourite in the past, up until today, but then i know that you do have to take the good with the bad.  It just seemed to go really slowly, and we seemed to be doing things that we could have read about rather than sat there and talked about.  One of the good things though that we did was that we learned that its not just DR ABC when it comes to assessing a patient, its actually DR AcBCDE.

The little ‘c’ is actually a check on the c-spine, which is located at the back of the neck.  This is done if you suspect a spinal injury, such as falling off a ladder. The ‘D’ is disability, and is used to check how responsive the patient is, which itself can be put into categories that range from alert to unconscious.  The ‘E’ is for environment, for example a patient could have been out in the cold for 20 minutes before you got to them, so while you’re assessing them, a blanket would be appropriate, or getting them into the back of the ambulance.

The secondary assessment involves checking the body for any signs of trauma, broken bones, CSF (cerebro-spinal fluid) leakage, haemorrhage, things of that kind.  This means that you have to check the whole body by literally feeling around, with gloves on, and noticing anything out of the ordinary.  It is especially important to check the back, as if the patient is lying on their back originally, it would be easy to miss a puncture wound of some kind that would have caused damage to the patients internal organs, or hit a blood vessel, causing a loss of blood.  Hopefully it would be noticed! 

I have my assessment for this on friday, which i think is going to be harder than last fridays on BLS.  Tomorrow we have a presentation to do on the KSF (Key Skills Framework) in the NHS.  Should be really interesting! Not!

Well the BLS assessment went well, was all over in a couple of minutes, might have been an advantage that we got a sneeky peak at the marking sheet, all you could hear was  ’Help’ being shouted down the corridors!  The other fun things that we got to do were use different airway adjuncts (posh word for holding the airway open), such as the laryngoscope.   This is just a glorified tong presser, such as those you have as a kid when you go to the doctors, im sure we can all remember ”open wide and say arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr”, but this thing has a light on so you can see down the throat. 

As we were practicing however, the dummy kept making a clicking sound, we were reliably informed that this would have been a persons teeth breaking had we been doing it for real.  Thank fully it wasnt, and it was only our first time.  Practice makes perfect as they say. 

In our first week of starting the course, we got to grips with the bed in the ambulance, which was being called a Cot (for reasons unknown), and how it goes up, down, left, right and how to crush it down it there’s a tight fit.  That bed does a lot more than you think!

We were also being shown the correct way to help a patient stand, or transfer from a bed to bed, chair to chair etc, and to do it safely to save our backs.  Were told not to lift except in extreme circumstances. 

We also had fun using the carry chair.  Our lecturer had only said 5 minutes before my turn that sometimes you will just get into fits of laughter when a patients is really ill.  Now this wasnt the same situation, but one of my female colleagues volunteered to go in the chair, and i had the leg end and another colleague had the head end.  I dont know what it was but we all started laughing, lecturers included, when we were carrying her up the stairs, i had to look away as tears were in my eyes i was laughing so much.  All i could see was this poor girl going up and down due to my colleague holding onto the bar and so when he laughed he shook the chair aswell.  It may be one of those ‘guess you had to be there’ stories but it was a nice way to end the first week.

As were already a few weeks into our course, we’ve started having little exams, the aim of which is to get them out of the way now than to have them all at the end of the year.  Our first is Adult BLS, which to most people is known as CPR, but with the new 2005 guidelines, its a little different than what most people are used to.  We do these things on what are known as Clinical Education days.  This are my favourite as there are hands on with equipment, and we get to play around with things figuring out how they work, and also it gives a feeling of that were actually doing something.  We will also have to wear our uniforms (when we get them), so that we get used to working in them, and also, more importantly we dont wreck all of our clothes with all the fake blood and make up that were going to have to wear!

Dont get me wrong, i understand the importance of the academic side of the course aswell, but im sure that you could all understand that you would like to be learning skills that are going to help you in you’re profession.

The BLS shouldnt be to hard, as having previous experience as a lifeguard, i was trained in the old rules, and it should not be to bad to upgrade to the new ones.  I hope all goes well, as then im off to my Nans 80th birthday party.  I hoping to suprise her.

Enjoy the Weekend!

Well, this is my first post of what i hope to be an entertaining blog into the life of a Trainee Paramedic.  I hope to include tales of my training and when im out on placement as pasrt of my studies. If anyone has any comments to make, i would appreciate them, as i would like this blog to work, rather than bomb!

Hope all is well.

Trainee Paramedic