I'm a pretty new EMT. Advice on real patient assessments?

[Dan216]

Hi all, I'm a fairly new EMT and for last 1.5 months or so I've been volunteering with a station. The station only has two paid guys per shift (It's small, 2-3 calls a day). They're a little short handed, so they don't mind me coming in a couple days a week to spend a day at the station.

Everyone's great about helping me learn, and I get along with all the guys! I've had two calls now where they have let me run the call and do the patient assessment. I always tend to freeze up, get tunnel vision, and basically forget all the questions I need to ask.:glare:

Do any of you experienced guys have any advice for me to get my actual patient assessment down?

 

[Medic Tim]

Practice practice practice. The more you do it the the better you will get.

Practice on family, friends, pets, anything.
With more experience you will become more comfortable and confident .

 

[mycrofft]

Take extra vital signs on patients, especially in a noisy environment.

Learn the finer points of recognition, like heart and lung sounds, characterizing your findings so they are documented right and make sense to others (such as "irreg-irreg thready radial pulse not 1/1 with apical ausc" meaning you palped the wrist and got a weak pulse which had no discernible pattern and which did not match a similar pattern when you ausc the heart itself). Ask your receiving hospitals about what they want to see in documentation when you hand them over.

Rehearse how to palpate and characterize assessment of fractures and other injuries related to joints, limbs, spine, pelvis, clavicles, ribs.

Remember to learn the balance between going too fast (efficiency) versus taking too long (effectiveness).

 

[Summit]

Listen to what the patient is telling you.

Don't forget to stop and think about your findings and what they mean and what other assesment steps they necessitate.

 

[Akulahawk]

Listen to what the patient is telling you.

Don't forget to stop and think about your findings and what they mean and what other assesment steps they necessitate.

In other words, as you listen to what the patient is telling you, get curious. Start digging into their story. Try to get those details. Don't forget that many times when the patient looks a little "off" something is wrong. Yes, your patient may look weird, unusual, may have tattoos in odd places, but what you're looking for is something that's out of the norm, something that is not the patient's baseline. When you see that, get really curious and try to figure out what it is.

Another thing you should do is start making lists of medications that you see that your patients are taking. Then after the call, use your time to look up what those medications are for. I am not saying that you should violate HIPAA, just get the names of those medications and look them up. Just by doing this, you will start to correlate medications with medical conditions. Later this will come in handy when your patient can't tell you their history and all you have is this pile of meds...

 

[CPRinProgress]

I'm in EMT class but most of the times I do some of the pt assessment. You just have to relax and try to remember your training. It gets easier.

 

[Dan216]

I appreciate all the advice guys! And that's a good idea with the medications since I don't know very many. Thanks.

 

[Uclabruin103]

Always remember your primary survey. If you're ever u sure of whats going on, revert back to your ABC's. The rest is practice like others have said. It truly does take awhile to be able to remember everything the patient is trying to tell you. They usually dont follow OPQRST and will just dump everything on you.