Life of a Trainee Paramedic

Hello again! It has been a month since I last posted, which is absolute rubbish, so I apologise for that.  This last month has been incredibly busy with lots of things going on at work, at uni, and at home. 

I had 2 weeks at home for the Easter break, and it was nice to be back, although my nan isn’t doing to good, so it was a sad time also.  For the past few holidays, when I’ve been at home, a lot of time has been spent doing uni work, and this holiday was no different.  We have 2 course related essays to do, and 2 definitely not course related essays! The course ones are quite interesting, and I actually like doing them as I feel as though I’m learning something.  The others are not related to Paramedic practice one little bit, but we have to do them, or we fail the entire course! Thankfully one of them got handed in today, and I’ve a few weeks before the next lot have to be in.

We have a multiple choice question paper on thursday, 50 questions from anything over the whole 2 years.  Our lecturers have been putting up practice ones which we could have a go at, and I havn;t done to badly on them, although in this test we need to get 80% to pass, rather than the 40% for all the essays that we do.  Our practical exams are also assessed differently, so for anyone reading this who think’s we only need 40% to pass those, don’t worry, we need to know what we are doing.

I did a few shifts before I wnet home for Easter, and they were with a Paramedic that I go out with when my Mentor is not working.  These were his last ever shifts as he handed in his notice, after being in the ambulance service for over 20 years.  I’m glad that I got to work with him, and felt that I did learn a lot from him, so as thanks I gave him a bottle of red wine.  Not being a red wine fan, I found myself asking this random girl looking at them, and she directed me to the nice ones.  She seemed French to me, and after seeing the French First Lady recently, I’ve decided French is good!

At the beginning of May, I will have my last practical exams, which I’ll hopefully pass 1st time, and then my last ever piece of work gets handed in on the 19th May, subject to me passing everything that is.  I’m hoping that I can enjoy the last few months of my course on placement, and not have to worry about any work that I still have to do.  It’s going to be very weird not being a student anymore after 5 years, but I’m looking forward to it.  I like going to Uni, it’s just all the work that I have to do to go with it, and personally I’ve had enough of writing essays!

I’ll hopefully be going back into theatres to finish off my intubation, and then if all goes well, everything will have been submitted for the exam board.  We get our results in the middle of July and then I’ll have a few months off before I go back to the States for a month.  I don’t think there is a day that goes by without me actually thinking about going away.  I need to forget about it, which will hopefully make it come round really quickly!

I’m hoping all my placement knowledge will come together and I can be more confident when making decisions.  At the moment, I say I want to do something, and even though I pretty sure that it’s the right decision, I look to my mentor for the nod.  I’m going to working 4 night shifts this weekend, the 1st lot of nights that I’ve done since January due to different things croping up.

Here’s to a happy thursday!

TP