No school today

Last night was the first test for my EMT class. I think I did pretty well, but I will know for sure tomorrow. For today I am just happy to have nothing to do tonight. I have been running around crazy for a while and I am happy to have a night to spend with my girls.

The written test seemed to go well. The practical I took afterwords was a nightmare. Luckily, a instructor I had never met before was very nice about how crappy I was doing things. The practical was about how well I can do scene size up, initial assessment and rapid trauma assessment. Scene size was easy; scene size up, bsi, is the scene safe?, how many patients?, medical or trauma? and a transport decision. OK, check. Initial assessment is where it went down hill. I nailed the general impression, c-spine support and chief complaint. After that things get fuzzy. I got my A,B,C's but missed some of the steps for each. OK, airway, is it open and clear? Breathing, look, listen, feel. That includes asking the patient if they are having trouble breathing and listen to two spots on their chest. I need to ask my partner now to get O2 and we will hook up the patient on a non-re breather mask for 15 liters. Then Circulation. I need to check that both radial and carotid pluses are present and equal. Then I need to check perfusion and do a sweep for body fluids. On to level on consciousness checks. Ask my three questions or move onto verbal or pain responses. Once that is done we are back to a transport decision.

OK, that was all without looking so I will have to check myself out now. I won't bore you or myself with the rapid trauma yet, since i need to make sure i know this for sure.

I watched this process happen in about 30 seconds back on the 30th of January. I rode with the Shawnee Fire Department. we only had one call and it happened to be a trauma call. A man fell about 15 feet from his ladder and landed chest first on the beam of the ladder. The Shawnee firefighters jumped right in and began this process immediately. To my surprise they had all the mans information before the medics even got there. They worked efficiently without having to do much communication between each other. It was nice to see the stuff I am learning in action and I believe it will help me to better visualize this stuff in the future. I guess we will see...

and of course the spell check won't work for some reason and I am a horrible speller.