"What every EMT should be required to experience before they graduate".

[mycrofft]

1. Spend one class fastened on a spineboard. Or at least 30 minutes.
2. Undergo a rapid eval, wearing a swimsuit under some clothes which can be cut. The team at the end of the semester who found the hidden injury fastest wins a very good prize, enough to get them fired up during the eval. It ought to be just your underwear and wearing your normal everyday clothes, but we can't have everything.
3. Lay down, be spineboarded and be transported code three across town in an ambulance. Put some rocks under your back to help simulate injures.

Any other such??? Hx taking? Exrication? EMT's speaking a foreign language? Blindfolded, earplugged or not allowed to speak (mute)?

[Summit]

How about some sleep deprivation, puke, and poo poo?

[JPINFV]

1. History and physical exam with standardized patients. (I'm probably sounding like a broken record at this point, but yea... standardized patients rock!).

2. A visit or two to a cadaver lab, even if it's just prosections being looked at.

[Seaglass]

Difficult patients. When I volunteer as a patient for courses approaching graduation, the instructors often ask us to be difficult. That can mean terrified, combative, uncommunicative, giving a rare medical history that'll fill up that tape on your thigh, or whatever... if we've had a real patient do it to us, it's fair game. Within reasonable limits for safety and all, of course. The difference between the graduates from this program and the graduates from mine, which always had easy scenario patients, is notable.

I also tend to think everyone should experience NPA administration before doing it to someone else, but that might be a bit extreme...

[mycrofft]

In my heyday as a simulated victim, it used to take five people to hold me down. I have also assumed a glazed look and wandered away from triage areas.

[firecoins]

spend a day dealing with psych patients.

do 10 rotations on the ambulance and 10 in the ER. Not the 1 and 1 we have now.

EVOC should be done as a part of the class.

[Seaglass]

Originally Posted by mycrofft

In my heyday as a simulated victim, it used to take five people to hold me down. I have also assumed a glazed look and wandered away from triage areas.

I'll see your altered mental and raise you altered mental who only speaks another language. I research and memorize new phrases and words just for MCI drills. Next time around, I'm calling a Trekkie friend and larnin' me some Klingon... they keep digging up someone who speaks my language.

Never had to be held down, but I did once slap a patient. The patient I was playing was a conservative Muslim without much English. While the first student was doing his thing quite nicely, his partner all of a sudden decides he's had enough with just taking clipboard notes. So he creeps up behind me and tries to shove a steth under my scarf and shift. I shriek and smack his hand. Student looks bewildered and says I can't do that. Instructor, after recovering from laughing fit, tells him he can expect a lot worse if he ever really does that.

My favorite other volunteer patients tricks are asking about filing a lawsuit, and carrying concealed weapons. Haven't gotten to do the latter yet.

[amberdt03]

Originally Posted by firecoins

spend a day dealing with psych patients.

do 10 rotations on the ambulance and 10 in the ER. Not the 1 and 1 we have now.

EVOC should be done as a part of the class.

really? i had to do 2 rotations in the ambulance and 4 in the er. although its not like i did much anyways.....had some very slow shifts.

i don't think evoc should be part of an emt class, as it should be taught when you get hired at a company.

[medichopeful]

Originally Posted by firecoins

spend a day dealing with psych patients.

do 10 rotations on the ambulance and 10 in the ER. Not the 1 and 1 we have now.

EVOC should be done as a part of the class.

I agree with all of this, but EVOC had better be an add on. We don't have enough class time as it is...

[medichopeful]

Originally Posted by mycrofft

1. Spend one class fastened on a spineboard. Or at least 30 minutes.
2. Undergo a rapid eval, wearing a swimsuit under some clothes which can be cut. The team at the end of the semester who found the hidden injury fastest wins a very good prize, enough to get them fired up during the eval. It ought to be just your underwear and wearing your normal everyday clothes, but we can't have everything.
3. Lay down, be spineboarded and be transported code three across town in an ambulance. Put some rocks under your back to help simulate injures.

Any other such??? Hx taking? Exrication? EMT's speaking a foreign language? Blindfolded, earplugged or not allowed to speak (mute)?

#1: For myself, done. We practiced extrication in an auditorium, and guess who got immobilized, on both a backboard and a KED? I have to say, though, that it's a good experience. It's not comfortable, and it's good to know what the patient has to go through.

#2: That would be good, but I don't see it happening.

#3: We don't do that, but we are going to have to perform CPR (on a dummy) in an ambulance while it's moving in a way that is, shall we say, interesting.