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EMSJunkies

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  1. I am one of her two preceptors. She received a third one two days ago though. No she isn't "wrong" because she doesn't do it my way. She's wrong because she is wrong. She misses major questions and never gets that info until I get it. While I agree that everyone has their own style one of her issues is that her style misses out on very important info needed. Patients don't just have chest pain. They have pain you think might be cardiac or that you think might not be cardiac. Her interviewing leaves her unable to lean in either direction. Her people skills are fine. She's comfortable speaking to patients. But not comfortable with giving orders for me or EMT's on location of things she'd like done. She has minimal BLS experience which is mostly related to private transport with maybe 20 911 calls with the volunteers over a year period. My county most of the EMT's are very medic dependent and require a medic to tell them what to do even simple things like getting vitals. That's due to the EMT program teaching them that they can't function without a medic telling them what to do. Plus a medic is dispatched on all calls no matter the nature. So she has no interviewing skills. 7 months ago she was horrible and even she admits it. Today she is a 100 times better. She went from no experience, not knowing any of her info like drugs or protocols, not knowing how to document her calls to being proficient with all of that except the interview. She's improved it greatly in the 7 months but has hit a wall over the last month or so. Literally the only thing holding her back is the interview. If I give her a scenario with all of the info she'd ever need without requiring her to ask any questions she'd give the correct treatment. She just can't ask all the right question to get that info on her own. The program is setup that they complete all didactic & clinical time prior to precepting time. Clinicals include riding with a medic for 12 hours every clinical weekend and the other 12 in the hospital. Come precepting time they at least typically know all they need to know to function as a very basic medic. Then precepting time we smooth out the rough edges, help them flow better and educate them on things not learned in school so they know why they're doing treatments and not just because the protocol says to do the treatment. They've changed the experience requirement so you can go from EMT school directly to medic school. No clue why and I have no control over that anyway. As for me someone had asked about my experience. I have over 20 years experience in EMS and 12 in law enforcement. I've had multiple students. I'm a tactical medic on 2 tactical teams for which I'm not only a medic but also an operator. I teach ACLS, PALS, CPR, tactical medicine and multiple others. We rotate between 9 units (a week per unit). Slowest unit is approx 4,000 call volume. Our 2 busiest do approx 8,000 calls each. We have single medic cars, EMT/medic units and dual medic units. Our locals range from rich suburbs, blue collar middle class, industrial and inner-city. Our inner city is listed as one of the most violent cities with one of the highest murder & violent crimes per capita in the US. Shootings are a daily event. Just the homicides alone are high based on capita. So she's exposed to a wide range of calls. It's just that darn interviewing. So back to my original question. Any good site I could use to help with her interviewing?

  2. My current student has been riding with me for 7 months now. She knows the info when questioned, given protocols/meds or given scenarios. But she has a poor time interviewing patients. She regularly interrupts them, asks questions out of order (like asking about allergies as the second question instead of asking for more info about the chest pain) and is basically all over the globe when asking. My past students I've been able to break this cycle if they had it. I'm looking for decent websites that have good info on interviewing patients, examples of scenarios with proper questioning or anything else that might help. She a smart kid and wants it but no where near being signed off yet. Typically they're signed off in 5 months of their preceptor time but even if she had a complete 180 today she wouldn't be signed off for at least a month longer to make sure it's not a fluke and she actually "got it". The interview is pretty much what's holding her back. And as we all know the interview & investigation is 90% of our job with the remainder being treating what we find. She's fine with the monkey skills. Just the interview...

  3. Even with what this doctor wrote, the poeple in the city I work in wouldnt follow it anyway. I work in a inner-city area and our hospital tends to be their regular doctors office. Out of the 11 calls I had today in a 12 hour period, 9 of them could of either stayed home or gone to a regular doctors office. I had a patient whos leg hurt after cramping up, a 3 y/o kid who had a "fever" of 99.2, a guy who was having abdominal pain from his hernia that he has had for 6 months and refuses to get repaired & a lady who wanted to go to the ED to get help quitting smoking (who by the way ws smoking when we arrived). Maybe I need to leave the inner-city and move to the burbs....

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