Life of a Trainee Paramedic

Well hello there! It’s been about 6 weeks since my last post, and I’m getting ready to go back to Uni again on Monday.  We had a meeting on tuesday where we were told about what was going to happen in the next year, and how the course has changed due to it being revalidated by the HPC, and so everything is going to be totally different.  The one big difference is that where the main exams used to be at the end of the year, usually May time, where hopefully if all went well, we would progress into the hospital’s to do our cannulation and intubation.  This has now changed in that we will be assessed on our cannulation November time, and if we pass it, then the Trust have said that we will be able to cannulate out on the road.  this was my understanding of the meeting anyway.  This is a very big change and has not been done before in any previous year’s of the course, so I’m interested to see how it pan’s out.  I think it is going to be very beneficial to us, as we won’t have as many exam’s come may, and we can practice these skills out on the road. 

I’m anticipating this year to absolutely fly by, as I know there will be a lot of work and reading to do, and when there is placement as well, there won’t be anytime to stop and think.  I’ve really missed it though over the 6 weeks that I’ve been off.  Whenever I see ambulance’s going past, I always start thinking about when my 1st shift back is going to be, and how I am going to be there for real in a year’s time.  It may be sad, but it put’s a smile on my face, I actually do want to do this job!  After this meeting, we had a chance to meet the new 1st year’s who then came on a night out with us and they all seem like a really nice bunch, who seem just as eager as we were 12 months ago.  Two of our lecturers have left and so we are going to have to get used to the new staff, as well as the new course, and we’ve even been kicked out of the main health building (because we don’t bring in a lot of money) and moved to a building next door, although a positive of this is that it should just be our room.

My time off has taken me to the west coast of the States, from Seattle to San Francisco, and it was fantastic.  I saw some amazing sites, and it was one of the best experiences of my life.  Although we did get visited by some bear’s one night, which I could have sworn were the biggest in north america, but thankfully they were black bear’s and were more interested in the steak that someone in another group had left in their cooler.  One bear’s though did decided to urinate about a foot from the entrance to one of our tent’s, when there were people inside the tent, a danish couple, who then the next night said they didn’t really sleep at all, well he didn’t!  It was a great mix of people, 5 English, 2 Northern Ireland, 1 Swiss, 1 German, 2 Danish and 1 Australian, and combined with our American tour guide made for an interesting group.

We are in Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday for the 1st 2 weeks and then just Thursday, Friday after that, so we will be able to go out on placement during that time aswell, although my mentor’s wife is due to have a baby, so I’ll probably be swapping between paramedic’s during that time. We shall see how it goes!

TP