First, welcome aboard!
I'll take a stab at answering your questions, but I agree with the poster above who advised you to browse around the site.
How much is there to learn so I will feel safe on most calls?
If you mean physically safe, just remember that you can leave at any time if you fear for your safety, and you can always call for police backup. If by safe you mean confident, just remember that the more you run, the more you'll learn. The certification class that you'll take will teach you a lot, but book knowledge isn't nearly as useful as field smarts.
how many calls per day?
Depends on where you're working. Where I work, its about 1-3 calls per 12 hour shift, on average, but that varies. If you're in a city, you might routinely spend your entire shift dealing with patients.
Is EMt also mean search and rescue (was told this by my uncle but he works in a foundry)?
Not where I work. We use fire fighters for that, but I've always wanted to take a search and rescue class. Ask someone who works where you plan to about this. The closest that I've come to doing search and rescue was looking for an Alzheimer's patient who had wandered off. We stood by our ambulance and comforted his family until the police and fire fighters found him (alive and safe).
Just a plain basic job description of the day as an EMT.
When the Lord made the EMT, he was into his sixth day of overtime when an angel appeared and said, " You're doing a lot of fiddling around on this one." And the Lord said, "Have you read the specs on this order?"
"An EMT has to be able to carry an injured person up a wet, grassy hill in the dark, dodge stray bullets to reach a dying child unarmed, enter homes a health inspector wouldn't touch, and not wrinkle their uniform."
"He has to be able to lift three times his own weight, crawl into wrecked cars with barely enough room to move, and console a grieving mother as he is doing CPR on a baby he knows will never breathe again."
"He has to be in top mental condition at all times, running on no sleep, black coffee, and half eaten meals. And he has to have six pairs of eyes."
The angel slowly shook her head and said, "Six pairs of hands? No way." "It's not the hands that are giving me the problem," said the Lord, "It's the three pairs of eyes an EMT has to have." "That's on the standard model?" asked the angel.
The Lord nodded. "One pair that sees open sores as he's drawing blood and asks the patient if they may be HIV positive, when he already knows the answer and wishes he'd taken that accounting job."
"Another pair here on the side of the head for his partner's safety.
Another pair here on the front that can look reassuringly at a bleeding victim and say 'You'll be alright ma'am', even though he knows it isn't so."
"Lord", said the angel, touching his sleeve, "rest and work on this tomorrow."
"I can't," said the Lord, "I already have the model that can talk a 250 pound drunk out from behind a steering wheel without incident and feed a family of four on a private service paycheck."
The angel asked very slowly, "Can it think?"
"You bet." said the Lord. "It can tell you the symptoms of 100 illnesses, recite drug calculations in its sleep, intubate, defibrillate, and continue CPR nonstop over terrain any doctor would fear... and still keeps its sense of humor."
"This EMT also has phenomenal control. He can deal with a multi-victim trauma, coax a frightened elderly person to unlock their door, comfort a murder victim's family, and then read in the daily paper how EMS was unable to locate a house quickly enough, allowing a person to die; a house which had no street sign, no house numbers, and no phone to call back."
Finally, the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek of the EMT. "There's a leak." she pronounced, "I told you that you were trying to put too much into this model."
"That's not a leak," said the Lord, "That is a tear." "What's the tear for?" asked the angel.
"It's for bottled-up emotions, for patients they tried in vain to save, for commitment to hope that they will make a difference in a person's chance to survive, for life."
"You're a genius!" exclaimed the angel.
The Lord looked somber. "I didn't put it there."
Author Unknown
That said, your job is generally to kick *** and help people out. It's by far the most challenging, but also the most rewarding, job around.
