Wednesday 4 November 2009

Scenarios

Training as a paramedic is great, but its not what you would say a normal educational experience, there is only so much that can be taught using power points, thats why the rest of time were practicing practical skills and applying what we learn into scenarios. Scenarios can be any patient, any situation, in whatever condition your tutors like, so try not to annoy them and hopefully your get good ones.

At the moment we tend to do 1 or 2 scenarios a week, which are progressively getting more challenging, and are based around what we have studied so far, so you guessed it, lots of CPR and airway management, and then shocking if necessary. The hardest thing about scenarios is you need to treat the situation as if it is real, which can be tricky when you know your in a warm classroom, with your tutor a few feet away, and your tutor is answering any questions you have for the patient. Remembering most of the time in scenarios your patient is in fact, yup you guessed it a dummy. When in this scenario a person has just collapsed and gone into cardiac arrest in the middle of a busy shopping centre, tricky.

I talk about the dummies quite a lot, they are actually quite technical pieces of kit. The dummies we use most often, can talk, breath, provide heart rhythm when the defibrillator is attached, and they have 'lungs' that inflate when you use bag valve mask (essentially used for getting oxygen into the patient, which means we can avoid mouth to mouth, which is always nice) so a good bit of kit, which helps to make these scenarios all the more real.

3 comments:

  1. Hi Mike reading your blog with interest. Alan

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  2. Being a paramedic is not an easy job!!My cousin is a good paramedic and she told be that paramedic is very stressful. So, they really need to have a good salary.Good job!
    emt training

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