It’s the week before the final exam and my EMT class is feeling the pressure. The two-hundred question final looms large on the horizon and, in less than a week, the students will need to perform five randomly selected skills stations perfectly. This is the task that has most of the students really feeling the heat.
So we do what we do every class. We practice and practice and practice. So
there we were, gathered around in groups, practicing our National Registry skills sheets. That’s when Joey asked me the question that absolutely floored me. It floored me and annoyed me, but really didn’t surprise me. I’ve heard the question asked before in many different ways.
Joey finished up his medical scenario and I was giving him some feedback on his performance. He looked down at the fictional patient’s medication list that I had provided him and he shrugged his shoulders. “We don’t really have to know what all these mean right?”
I told him I didn’t understand. He mulled the thought over in his head and took another stab at it. “I mean…we need to write these down and report them to the doctor, but it isn’t important for us to know what they all do. (Pause.) As EMT’s. (Pause.) Right?”
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It’s never comfortable to be placed under a microscope. Especially when the dude looking through the microscope is The Rogue Medic, Tim Noonan. Tim’s a great dude, but he’s not the guy you want picking through your knowledge sock drawer. He’s thorough, he’s smart and he’s willing to analyze the details long after you and I have gone to bed.
If you don’t already read Tim’s blog you should. He’s a fantastic EMS blogger. That being said, I wasn’t terribly excited when he posted a comment on my post “I’m Only An EMT Basic” announcing that his comments on the piece could be found over at Rogue Medic headquarters.
For the record, my piece received nothing but kind handling by Tim. The question he chose to focus his lens on? Are lung sounds a part of the EMT scope of practice?
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I’m so sick of hearing this phrase. If I could banish any phrase from the EMS lexicon this would most certainly be the one. I heard it today when I posted a question on Twitter, “How much do you really know about ACE inhibitors?”
I asked. The first reader reply, “Not much since I’m only an EMT Basic.” Ouch. I get stomach pains when I hear that.
I want to make a bonfire out of all the worthless phrases in our vocabulary and throw, “I’m only a …” right on top.
Since when was an understanding of out patients medications an advanced skill? Since when is medical knowledge of any kind an advanced skill?
Somewhere along the way we started giving EMT Basics the idea that anything that isn’t contained in their EMT textbook is somehow beyond them. It’s patronizing. “Here you go little EMT dude, here’s the basics. Don’t move on to anything more complicated, you could hurt yourself.” That’s just ridiculous.
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