Life of a Trainee Paramedic

Well I finished the first year of the course last Friday and I am now back home having a nice break.  We still have work to do over the holidays as they don’t have enough time at Uni to teach us all the stuff we need to know so it’s  left up to us to get to grips with it before we arrive at the beginning of October.  I had 3 day shifts last week to finish me off and they were all quite quiet, one day we didn’t have a job past 12.30, when we didn’t finish until 6.45.  I shouldn’t be complaining really as some days we can get shafted with every job and don’t stop.  I tend to like a day that is a little in between both.

I had my first experience of treating a patient who I really thought did not wanted to be treated by me.  When I was the one asking the question’s, he barely murmured, but when my mentor did, he was very vocal, as though they had suddenly remembered how to speak English.  I had not encountered this type of situation before, but it was to be expected.  Not everyone is going to like being treated by a student.  I’ve been lucky that 99.9% of patients that we’ve attended have been quite happy for me to treat them.  I think most people see the uniform and think you must know what your going on about (although for me that’s not the case).  If I was to do anything wrong, I know that I would be told about it and then know not to do it again.  All together though, I think I’ve had a good year.

I go away on holiday on Wednesday.  I’m going to be doing this tour, with a company called Trek America and I absolutely cannot wait to go.  I’ll be starting in Seattle and working my way down to San Francisco via a few national parks.  This way I’m going to be able to properly explore America rather than just see the commercialised area’s, E.g. Florida! I havn’t really had a proper break this year, as even in the holidays we have got work to do, and no actual time off.  I know we can chose whether to do the work or not, but it would only pile up closer to the hand in date if it didn’t get done earlier.  I’ll be going by myself as most of my friends back home have full time jobs now, or will have from September and others have partners and obviously like to go away with them.  Luckily most of the people that go on these tours are single travellers and everyone just makes friends when they meet.  It’s a camping holiday, so i’m going to be on the look out for Bears and such like, but it should be a really great experience. 

As such, I’m not going to be blogging anymore until we start back at University at the beginning of October, which in reality is only 6 weeks away. 

I hope everyone enjoy’s what is left of the summer!

TP

Well today was my resit test for the C1 category to go on my driving licence, and thankfully I passed.  I have to have this to even drive the ambulances and to therefore go and do the blue-light course, and therofre be employed by the Trust.  After the 1st time, I was a little worried about how it would go today.  The 1st bits of the test are 2 of the main sections.  Last time I nearly ran over a cone (which was 7ft close than it should have been), and then I apparantely didn’t brake fast enough.  This time round, I thought I’m going to slam the brakes on and thankfully it worked.  I was a little worried about 20 minutes from the end of the test as the examiner just closed up his book, and didn’t write anything in it until the end.  earlier in the test, my beady eyes had spotted 2 strikes on one section, and I’m sure that if you get 3 of the same, then your dead, so I was sure that was what had happened.  I was contemplating when I could possibly resit it as I head home for the ’summer’ next friday so it would have been at least October and then it would have cost another wad of cash. 

Luckily I was wrong!

TP

Well it’s been a few weeks since I last posted and I’ve worked quite a few shifts between now and then, both days and nights.  I had my first heroin overdose and it was quite a serious job as without any intervention, this patient would have died.  They were breathing at about 4 a minute when it should really be anything between 12-20 breaths a minute.  It was the 1st time that I’ve seen a bag and mask used in real life to help a patient to breath, this was because the heroin was causing respiratory depression, which means that not enough oxygen is getting to body and essentially the brain and heart.  They were given a drug to counteract the effects of the heroin and they gradually came round and denied ever taking anything in the 1st place.  We knew they had because they wouldn’t have come round otherwise.  They didn’t want to give us any details or go to hospital, so walked off.  The danger is that the drug we give does not actually remove the heroin, so if it’s used up quickly then the same thing can happen again, but then you can’t force someone to go to hospital is they don’t want to (except in certain circumstances).

I also attended my 1st patient totally by myself with no help from my colleagues, and suprisingly to me, I was correct in my diagnosis.  I have been attending patient’s well before now but then I always had my mentor behind me to chip in if I got stuck anywhere, but this time he said he was going to let me do one all alone, and I would be the one suggesting any drugs to use or treament, and what obs I would like to do.  I thought it was a good experience for me, and was glad I did it.

On the other hand, there was a recent job where I wasn’t so pleased.  This was a patient who had chest pain with it radiating to their shoulder tips and sides of chest.  I had no clue what could have been the problem, where as my mentor and colleague thought it could be a Pulmonary Embolism (amongst other things), virtually straight away.  I had no idea about that.  So I wasn’t to happy with this job, and I asked not to attend any more chest pain patient’s until next year because I really don’t have the level of knowledge that is required to properly assess the patient.  I was told I’d asked all the right questions, which was fine, but then asking the right question’s and not being able to interpret the answers is not that good.  I know it will come with experience, and what I will learn next year will obviously help.

I’ve been glad it’s been getting a little sunnier lately as a few weeks ago, when the 2nd set of floods rain was coming down, I got drenched at an RTC everywhere down from my his-vis jacket.  Luckily it was the last job of the shift as we were all dripping and it wouldn’t have been nice to work like that for to long.  Were all getting new uniform by September and I think I’m going to put down for a set of waterproof trousers after that soaking.  I asked the fireman why they couldn’t have an industrial size umbrella, when he then told me they were all getting ’summer’ hats as opposed the the big ones they have now.  How lucky for them!

I’ve only got 3 shifts left now until I finish for this academic year, and I booked my holiday yesterday, so 3 weeks today I’m off to do some trekking in the States, where hopefully it will be nice weather. 

TP