Something new our class is trying is a 12 hour ride on an ambulance to help ease us into rotations a bit better. Many of my classmates have worked in emergency medicine but many of them have not. This was a great idea for everyone because we could finally see the meds we are learning about being used in action. There were two stations for this ambulance service that we were stationed at. Typically, 2-3 students were at one location and 1 at another. I was located at the station in Mechanicville by myself with two paramedics. At first, I thought I would get maybe one or two calls at the most. It was a very slow morning, we were just sitting in the station for 5 hours before we received our first call. By the end of the day we surprisingly received 4 calls, only 3 of which that we actually arrived at. (One of the calls was cancelled on our drive over because someone had passed before we arrived.) One call was unique and we did not need to provide much assistance. Two of the calls were related to SOB. One had COPD and lower back pain and the other was more of an emergency with heart failure and possible STEMI. I got to use my ER tech skills and place all the patients on the heart monitor and EKG. I listened to their lungs and the last patient we had was very crackley bilaterally. When we got to the hospital to transfer him, they took an Xray and there were kerley B lines diffusely spread across his lungs. At this point, I realized that one year ago, I had no idea what any of these things were. I would never be listening to a patient and being able to make differential diagnoses in an emergent situation. It was a satisfying learning moment. What amazed me most was just watching the medics work. It was interesting to see how well the paramedics could do everything in a bumpy vehicle while putting IV's in, filling the nebulizer etc. At the end of the 12 hour shift we were frozen because the temperatures out today ranged from -5 to 10 degrees. Arriving back at the station the medics wrote up their reports of the cases from today and even let me have a copy of the EKG's once they removed patient identifiers. I would just like to thank the paramedics that worked with me. They were extremely friendly and helped me learned so much in just 4 calls. I think that this exercise was definitely worth it, I hope my classmates got as much out of this as I did.
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**As many of you can tell, I graduated AMC's program in May of 2017. Current plan is to start a new blog related to my Fellowship after PA school. Stay tuned for the link and updates :)**
Lindsey the
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