It's a hard 'nough life when you're a probie--especially if you're a generally clueless probie, like me.
Fire trainee, rookie, probie, newbie...I've heard them all. There are times when I feel like my probationary period with Sheridan Fire is going to be a long, long journey.
Last term, one of my instructors forwarded us a link to an article, accurately entitled "Shut Up and Train More". That article has been invaluable to me, although I will not say that I have followed every suggestion in every instance. It's a lot to remember, but I would recommend it to anyone who finds themselves in a probie's shoes.
Shift begins at 0800, but we're supposed to be up and ready for the day by 0730. I feel wretched because I didn't know I was supposed to be up at this same time on the morning we get off shift. That's probably when I started reevaluating the wisdom of going on calls three nights in a row, when I wasn't required to for two of them. I woke up groggy, puffy-eyed, looked at my watch and decided to reset my alarm and catch a few more winks.
Never again.
Also I left my gear on the medic one morning, in my rush to get ready for class.
Hopefully never again as well.
I've always heard that you never make the same mistake twice.
Please let that be true.
I might wake up to the soft, steady beeping of my watch, but more often than not I wake up to my neighbor's quiet hip hop music that gradually increases in decibel level until I am fully awake and pulling my pillow over my ears or dragging my carcass out of bed to the shower.
After breakfast and cleaning the kitchen, we do our rig checks on both medics and have assigned duties, such as cleaning the bathrooms, detailing the rigs or mopping the floors in the bay. There's also usually some other jobs, such as pressure-washing the parking lot.
That was actually kind of fun.
Schedule is subject to change because people tend to have emergencies at unscheduled times. :) But as the rookie, I don't see this as a problem. If I can go on calls, I will.
End of story.
The evening is when things slow down a bit. The administrative staff go home, we might attempt to cook and actually eat dinner, with varying degrees of success. We have house chores that include making sure the floors are swept, trash is taken out, bathrooms our clean, counter is wiped down and the dishwasher is ready to run. I might have laundry to do, but most often, as the probie, I sit down with my textbooks and begin the mind-numbing process of learning and attempting to commit to memory every detail about every type of shock, or every step of every airway management procedure like my life depends on it.
My career, at least, does.
Each student in my class has a thick packet with all the skills we are required to know and will be tested on, and let me tell you, the amount of things we have to remember absolutely terrifies me. I sometimes wonder if my brain even has the capacity to store that much information. Sometimes it feels like I'm cramming information into my head just as fast as I can, but it keeps leaking out a hole in the back of my head.
Strange as it may sound, I like the late night calls the best. You certainly get to know your partners well when you're working together at 2 AM. If there's one thing they are learning about me during those calls, it's that I can be a blunderbuss. For example, around 1:30 AM on a night when I was not on shift but decided to tag along we were on a call to the prison. That was a little weird, waltzing into the men's dormitory (me being the only female). That was my first call at an unearthly hour and it must be said, I was so foggy that I barely even comprehended what was going on. That is probably why I attempted to set the brake on the gurney with my hands instead of my foot and ended up pinching off a good-sized hunk of my thumb. That is why I sat in the back of the medic during the transport with a bloody thumb wrapped in the edge of my sweatshirt until I finally asked for a band-aid.
I like going on call with the other shifts because I learn something from everyone, and everyone has a slightly different teaching style. This medic is really good about explaining what they're doing and why they're doing it, another always finds ways for me to be involved in patient care, and another always asks me what I would have done for that patient, with what little BLS knowledge I have, and then explaining the rationale for what they did as well.
I am aware that we have a candidate for another Resident Volunteer from West Valley who will be having his interview very soon, and another guy who will be doing some ride-alongs in the coming weeks, so it is quite possible that I will not be the only probie for very long. That would actually be really nice. I'm learning that as a probie you volunteer or get "volun-told" for just about everything.
And the shame of having to strip all the stickers from my helmet...it was hard. I long for that distant day when my helmet will bear EMT-Basic symbol on it.
Soon...
Which brings me to school. We are coming into week 4. Only 6 more weeks after that. Time is flying, like it always does when you're having fun. We're moving on from taking vitals, patient assessment and airway management to medication administration, shock treatment and spinal immobilization. We swabbed measured globs of frosting (chocolate is the best) on the inside of each others' cheeks and gums in lieu of oral glucose, practiced with the trainer Epi-pens, and administered nerds in place of nitroglycerin and aspirin. I believe that in the next week or two we will be practicing giving each other subcutaneous injections (since epinephrine can be administered that way), and the thought makes me want to pass out. I've put up with a lot of needles already, what with a new TB screening and getting shots for Hep B, tetanus, varicella, MMR and goodness knows what else. That wasn't bad, but at least I had the comfort of knowing the nurses had practice. I don't want my classmates anywhere near me with a needle, and I bet they sure don't want me anywhere near them with a needle either!
I have trust issues.
And those issues are progressively getting worse.
My partners who strapped me down onto the backboard picked me up and wobbled the board back and forth, almost flipping me face down, and pretended to drop the board.
One of the EMT's at the station said he'd pay me a dollar to eat what I later realized were dog treats. No, I did not eat them.
I backed the medic into the bay after a call (which was really superfluous, since the driver could probably back the medic into the bay in his sleep), then the paramedic rolls his window down and says to hop back in because we were getting another call.
So I jump back in, buckle my seatbelt and twist around to glance into the front. No one's there and I hear the doors slamming shut as my partners gleefully hightail it out of the bay.
Anyway, one of my classmates took some pictures of our airway management lab, so I thought I'd share.
The guys who put together or class's facebook page got creative with our banner. :)
Fire trainee, rookie, probie, newbie...I've heard them all. There are times when I feel like my probationary period with Sheridan Fire is going to be a long, long journey.
Last term, one of my instructors forwarded us a link to an article, accurately entitled "Shut Up and Train More". That article has been invaluable to me, although I will not say that I have followed every suggestion in every instance. It's a lot to remember, but I would recommend it to anyone who finds themselves in a probie's shoes.
Shift begins at 0800, but we're supposed to be up and ready for the day by 0730. I feel wretched because I didn't know I was supposed to be up at this same time on the morning we get off shift. That's probably when I started reevaluating the wisdom of going on calls three nights in a row, when I wasn't required to for two of them. I woke up groggy, puffy-eyed, looked at my watch and decided to reset my alarm and catch a few more winks.
Never again.
Also I left my gear on the medic one morning, in my rush to get ready for class.
Hopefully never again as well.
I've always heard that you never make the same mistake twice.
Please let that be true.
I might wake up to the soft, steady beeping of my watch, but more often than not I wake up to my neighbor's quiet hip hop music that gradually increases in decibel level until I am fully awake and pulling my pillow over my ears or dragging my carcass out of bed to the shower.
After breakfast and cleaning the kitchen, we do our rig checks on both medics and have assigned duties, such as cleaning the bathrooms, detailing the rigs or mopping the floors in the bay. There's also usually some other jobs, such as pressure-washing the parking lot.
That was actually kind of fun.
Schedule is subject to change because people tend to have emergencies at unscheduled times. :) But as the rookie, I don't see this as a problem. If I can go on calls, I will.
End of story.
The evening is when things slow down a bit. The administrative staff go home, we might attempt to cook and actually eat dinner, with varying degrees of success. We have house chores that include making sure the floors are swept, trash is taken out, bathrooms our clean, counter is wiped down and the dishwasher is ready to run. I might have laundry to do, but most often, as the probie, I sit down with my textbooks and begin the mind-numbing process of learning and attempting to commit to memory every detail about every type of shock, or every step of every airway management procedure like my life depends on it.
My career, at least, does.
Each student in my class has a thick packet with all the skills we are required to know and will be tested on, and let me tell you, the amount of things we have to remember absolutely terrifies me. I sometimes wonder if my brain even has the capacity to store that much information. Sometimes it feels like I'm cramming information into my head just as fast as I can, but it keeps leaking out a hole in the back of my head.
Strange as it may sound, I like the late night calls the best. You certainly get to know your partners well when you're working together at 2 AM. If there's one thing they are learning about me during those calls, it's that I can be a blunderbuss. For example, around 1:30 AM on a night when I was not on shift but decided to tag along we were on a call to the prison. That was a little weird, waltzing into the men's dormitory (me being the only female). That was my first call at an unearthly hour and it must be said, I was so foggy that I barely even comprehended what was going on. That is probably why I attempted to set the brake on the gurney with my hands instead of my foot and ended up pinching off a good-sized hunk of my thumb. That is why I sat in the back of the medic during the transport with a bloody thumb wrapped in the edge of my sweatshirt until I finally asked for a band-aid.
I like going on call with the other shifts because I learn something from everyone, and everyone has a slightly different teaching style. This medic is really good about explaining what they're doing and why they're doing it, another always finds ways for me to be involved in patient care, and another always asks me what I would have done for that patient, with what little BLS knowledge I have, and then explaining the rationale for what they did as well.
I am aware that we have a candidate for another Resident Volunteer from West Valley who will be having his interview very soon, and another guy who will be doing some ride-alongs in the coming weeks, so it is quite possible that I will not be the only probie for very long. That would actually be really nice. I'm learning that as a probie you volunteer or get "volun-told" for just about everything.
And the shame of having to strip all the stickers from my helmet...it was hard. I long for that distant day when my helmet will bear EMT-Basic symbol on it.
Soon...
Which brings me to school. We are coming into week 4. Only 6 more weeks after that. Time is flying, like it always does when you're having fun. We're moving on from taking vitals, patient assessment and airway management to medication administration, shock treatment and spinal immobilization. We swabbed measured globs of frosting (chocolate is the best) on the inside of each others' cheeks and gums in lieu of oral glucose, practiced with the trainer Epi-pens, and administered nerds in place of nitroglycerin and aspirin. I believe that in the next week or two we will be practicing giving each other subcutaneous injections (since epinephrine can be administered that way), and the thought makes me want to pass out. I've put up with a lot of needles already, what with a new TB screening and getting shots for Hep B, tetanus, varicella, MMR and goodness knows what else. That wasn't bad, but at least I had the comfort of knowing the nurses had practice. I don't want my classmates anywhere near me with a needle, and I bet they sure don't want me anywhere near them with a needle either!
I have trust issues.
And those issues are progressively getting worse.
My partners who strapped me down onto the backboard picked me up and wobbled the board back and forth, almost flipping me face down, and pretended to drop the board.
One of the EMT's at the station said he'd pay me a dollar to eat what I later realized were dog treats. No, I did not eat them.
I backed the medic into the bay after a call (which was really superfluous, since the driver could probably back the medic into the bay in his sleep), then the paramedic rolls his window down and says to hop back in because we were getting another call.
So I jump back in, buckle my seatbelt and twist around to glance into the front. No one's there and I hear the doors slamming shut as my partners gleefully hightail it out of the bay.
Anyway, one of my classmates took some pictures of our airway management lab, so I thought I'd share.
The guys who put together or class's facebook page got creative with our banner. :)
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