The beginning!

Hello and welcome to my blog, this first post is gonna be big one, so get a brew on the go! This blog is a bit of a late starter, the course actually started at the beginning of october, with so many new things happening it was very hard to find time to start this blog. However as things have started to settle down now, I am excited to be able to write this blog, so it would be rude not to share some of my experiences so far.....

The first week!!

It was always gonna be a nervous affair, everyone going crazy introducing themselves, and getting to know people, and it didn't disappoint. :) the course itself consists of 30 people, a lot of names to remember on your first day! Everyone on the course seems nice, and are equally excited about the opportunity to train as a paramedic, which is great as I can't wait.

Okay time to pause, the truth is I have been waiting, for nearly 2 years for this course to start, as I was originally offered a place on the course in 2007, as a deferred entrant, because of the popularity they had filled that year completely, but thankfully I was offered a place on the following year, which is now 2009.

So the first week was a lot of getting to know you getting to know us, we had talks from various paramedics, that would be our tutors throughout our training, again a very nice bunch, with lots of info and support to share!

The second week!

This is the first real week where we started learning paramedic knowledge and skills, to sum it up breifly, CPR and Lifting!
It was in all honesty a tiring week, both physically and mentally, the start of the week involved lots of anatomy, just remember, air goes in and out and blood goes round and round. :) Then came the second part, CPR and lifting, at this point you can go ahead and cancel any gym memberships you have, effective CPR is incredibly tiring, and as hard as we tried, that dummy wasn't coming back to life :) then comes the lifting, basically a 10 stone deadweight dummy in a carry chair up and stairs all day, but being realistic 10 stone is light, there gonna be larger that life patients out there, our poor backs!!

The third week

Lots and lots of info, and the introduction of our books, it is in fact a jaw dropping moment when you are giving a book, that is so large that if dropped on someone would probably ironically require an ambulance, but a bit of bed time reading to take away! This week is beginning to sound a bit dull I hear you say, nope we got to play with defibrillators, so now the dummies get to be beaten up by us during CPR and then shocked with a defib, the good news we did save the dummy.
The fourth week

Respiratory system as mentioned earlier air goes in and out, we covered loads of info. All of this however is massively over shadowed by the introduction of our uniforms, needless to say it was exciting, and it was amazing how professional we all look wearing green. (green is great, it's my favorite colour, but I must stress that in no way did the colour of uniform influence my decision to become a paramedic, well not much anyway) for me everything became very real after putting on the uniform. Which is good placement is only a few weeks away now, and we will leave the comforts of the classroom and get to experience exactly what were training to do.

The fifth week

This week saw us talking about the cardiovascular system and the various disease's that can effect it, and also gave us a introduction to ECG, or Electrocardiogram, you have probably seen these before, either in hospital or on TV, (they are the squiggles on the monitor that flat line and then everyone panics) they are truthfully quite tricky to grasp, but it is something that will come with time, well hopefully anyway.

Right this brings us up to date nicely, there have been areas I have missed out here, but it is amazing how much we have done and learnt in such a short time, I am hoping to be able to update regularly and provide a lot more detail over the coming weeks, and fill in some of the bits of I missed out in future blogs!