Within the medical career path offered at school, there are two certifications available through students’ senior year: CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) and EMT (Emergency Medical Technician). The class is taught by Mr. Robert Currie in E108 every B-day as a block schedule split between an AM and PM class with fifteen total students. In addition to a heavy textbook of forty chapters, students must undergo hands-on experience through 12-hour shifts in the ER and the ambulance.
Since an EMS provider is a role heavy with responsibility, both in the legal field and moral role, students are given a chance to test their skills and memory when faced with real-time medical and trauma calls.
While most of what students learn is acquired from the textbook, various skills and focus classes are taught; however, reading the textbook plays a great part in how much students retain from the class. Mr. Currie suggests to all EMT students to “read that book.”
Given that many EMT students have no prior experience with such hands-on work tied by the stress of some scenarios, shifts can bring back very interesting stories to the classroom.
Shifts on the ambulance could range from trauma calls of motor vehicle crashes, a call for an elderly man who pulled a neck muscle, to even a woman who believes she is seeing monkeys.
“I was afraid of messing up and just doing something wrong,” Karla Zamudio, an EMT student in the PM class, said.
Many of these students can experience and see while on their ambulance shifts are key to their application of skills and practice that is put towards the likelihood of passing the big test for EMT certification. Patients could all range from different ethnic groups, ages, and sex.
“I didn’t get any interesting cases, so my favorite thing to do was sleep between calls,” Imani White, from the PM class, said.
Over the twelve hours of a single shift, they can also vary with how fast everything happens. If there are multiple calls within three hours, the time can go by quickly; otherwise, without any calls, the entire shift can go by very slowly, with many other paramedics and EMTs napping during their off-time.
Students are expected to perform a full assessment of patients, including vital signs, head-to-toe assessments, and medical history. That said, as mentioned by Mr. Currie himself, it is very important for students to begin reviewing their textbooks now.
“I would go over my notes and go over all of the acronyms for all the things that we need to write down and just lay out the information so I could easily write it down,” Roselyn Saldana, from the PM class, said.
Considering the big certification test is sometime between May and June, it is expected that EMT students finish and upload all of their shifts before the end of April. This is a final reminder for our students to finish up their shifts and to give their best!
