One of you recently asked me about the transition from Paramedic to Doctor, if it was easier or harder? Not really sure where to begin but I'm going to try. It was easier... and was much harder at the same time. In what aspects? hmmm...
It was harder to sit in class for hours at a time getting the taking of "blood pressure" explained to you, and follo
wed by a "practical" session where I had to show them how I could successfully do it... ***facepalm*** The amount of hours that I wasted in medical school re-learning the crap that I already knew was enormous... so don't let anybody ever tell you that you are "just a paramedic" or "just an EMT" or "just a nurse" because it is quite unbelievable how much I already took in before ever stepping foot in medical school.
It was very hard to keep a straight face when my classmates were raising their hands asking the difference between "anaphylaxis and an anxiety attack, because to me it seems like they present exactly the same way." ***facepalm*** ugh...
It was hard for me to stay awake during our ECG class while students were arguing how to tell the difference between a "p-wave" and a "t-wave." ***facepalm*** ugh...
It was also very hard for me during clinicals to not shove somebody out of my way when they were royally messing things up... I just kept telling myself... "I'm not yet a doctor... they are going to be writing my evaluation... breathe... breathe... I know it is wrong to give amiodarone to an asystolic infant ***facepalm***, but he is the doctor... I know we should be restarting compressions since we haven't done any in over a minute ***facepalm***... but he is the doctor... I'm just 'a wanna be docta-paramagic'... You are not a paramedic here today... you are a med student that doesn't know anything."
However, it was much easier to impress everyone on clinicals when this "dumb med student" could pull some kickass ECG knowledge out of his rear end... nothing like having your "med student" call that MI when no-one else did... or when I got laughed at for offering to start an IV on a pt that 4 nurses missed 12 times & a doctor missed x2 via ultrasound... yet I got a 20gg on the first try. I'm not saying I'm all that & a bag of chips, but having stuck enough people through the inner city potholes at 60mph with crappy ambulance lighting... I do have a bit of an advantage there...
It was also easier for me to walk into a pt's room and start chatting with them while at the same time getting their PMH, HPI, and doing the PE... while the other med students were pouring with sweat trying to ask the pt's name. I definitely received plenty of weird looks when I just gowned up & started doing stuff during critical medical & trauma pts while the other students were huddled in a corner with their clipboards. Paramagicking was an advantage there.
I elected to rarely tell anyone that I did anything medical prior, because it was easier to amaze when their expectations were low of me as they normally are of regular med students, than when I set the bar high and mess up... "oh so you were a paramedic huh?! you think you know everything then huh?!"... ***facepalm*** I'm not exactly sure why everyone's stereotype of paramedics is a bunch of "know it alls," but sadly it was the case on numerous occasions.
EMS is an extremely unique facet of medicine. Our skill set & knowledge is a giant mix of nursing/doctoring/social work/CNAing/counseling/ hospice... we hold people's hands/we talk about their depression/we intubate them/we start IVs in their feet & necks/we bring them back from their ODs/we resuscitate them... and we pronounce them dead. There is no other facet of medicine that does all of that at the same time.
*****Please do not think that this is some sort of an attack on any of the professions that I just mentioned above, I am simply stating that EMS possess a blend of select skills from all of these professions. Every medical profession is unique in itself with its own set of +/-... remember teamwork, everyone has a role within the playground of medicine *****
As a medical student AND a paramedic, I had a much easier time understanding the entire patient. I was comfortable with patients, regardless of how sick/dead/or malingering they were... I could smell BS before I even walked in the room, but I could also tell when my pt was sick...or ready to code... something a lot of students & actual doctors were clueless about. Do this long enough & EMS will make you develop a 6th sense for pts, and that helped out a great deal in medical school.
I had a doctor (one of my school professors) kind of heatedly exclaim to me how "paramedics have an unfair advantage" over the regular medical students... "you guys excel at clinical way too much." Still to this day, I'm not exactly sure whether he meant it as a bad thing...
Many doctors and other clinicians will disagree with me on this, but seeing a patient is seeing a patient, regardless of what certification you carry in your pocket. They will argue that it is different seeing a patient as a doctor or seeing a patient as a nurse or a paramedic or an EMT... That kind of rhetoric comes only from someone who never did medicine before getting his current clinician level.
Watching a CHF-er drown in his own fluid is the same whether you are a doctor, nurse, paramedic, emt or a CNA. The smell of sepsis doesn't get much different the higher up a ladder you go. When a patient pukes on my white doctor coat, it looks the same as when the same patient puked on my paramedic uniform the day before. When a nurse gets blood on her scrubs, or a paramedic gets blood on his boots, that blood looks remarkably the same on my white physician coat.
The higher up a ladder you go, the more you know, and the more you realize how much there is left to learn... the patients do not change, they are the same patients, you just change... your skills get better, your BSoMeter improves as does your S#$+Ometer... and your willingness to ask for help also improves (for most of us).
So the question is, are you gonna be a doctor? My answer is, I am, but I'm gonna be a paramedic first.
Paramedic to Physician. #paramedic #EMS #doctor #physician #EMT
It was very hard to keep a straight face when my classmates were raising their hands asking the difference between "anaphylaxis and an anxiety attack, because to me it seems like they present exactly the same way." ***facepalm*** ugh...
It was hard for me to stay awake during our ECG class while students were arguing how to tell the difference between a "p-wave" and a "t-wave." ***facepalm*** ugh...
It was also very hard for me during clinicals to not shove somebody out of my way when they were royally messing things up... I just kept telling myself... "I'm not yet a doctor... they are going to be writing my evaluation... breathe... breathe... I know it is wrong to give amiodarone to an asystolic infant ***facepalm***, but he is the doctor... I know we should be restarting compressions since we haven't done any in over a minute ***facepalm***... but he is the doctor... I'm just 'a wanna be docta-paramagic'... You are not a paramedic here today... you are a med student that doesn't know anything."
However, it was much easier to impress everyone on clinicals when this "dumb med student" could pull some kickass ECG knowledge out of his rear end... nothing like having your "med student" call that MI when no-one else did... or when I got laughed at for offering to start an IV on a pt that 4 nurses missed 12 times & a doctor missed x2 via ultrasound... yet I got a 20gg on the first try. I'm not saying I'm all that & a bag of chips, but having stuck enough people through the inner city potholes at 60mph with crappy ambulance lighting... I do have a bit of an advantage there...
It was also easier for me to walk into a pt's room and start chatting with them while at the same time getting their PMH, HPI, and doing the PE... while the other med students were pouring with sweat trying to ask the pt's name. I definitely received plenty of weird looks when I just gowned up & started doing stuff during critical medical & trauma pts while the other students were huddled in a corner with their clipboards. Paramagicking was an advantage there.
I elected to rarely tell anyone that I did anything medical prior, because it was easier to amaze when their expectations were low of me as they normally are of regular med students, than when I set the bar high and mess up... "oh so you were a paramedic huh?! you think you know everything then huh?!"... ***facepalm*** I'm not exactly sure why everyone's stereotype of paramedics is a bunch of "know it alls," but sadly it was the case on numerous occasions.
EMS is an extremely unique facet of medicine. Our skill set & knowledge is a giant mix of nursing/doctoring/social work/CNAing/counseling/
*****Please do not think that this is some sort of an attack on any of the professions that I just mentioned above, I am simply stating that EMS possess a blend of select skills from all of these professions. Every medical profession is unique in itself with its own set of +/-... remember teamwork, everyone has a role within the playground of medicine *****
As a medical student AND a paramedic, I had a much easier time understanding the entire patient. I was comfortable with patients, regardless of how sick/dead/or malingering they were... I could smell BS before I even walked in the room, but I could also tell when my pt was sick...or ready to code... something a lot of students & actual doctors were clueless about. Do this long enough & EMS will make you develop a 6th sense for pts, and that helped out a great deal in medical school.
I had a doctor (one of my school professors) kind of heatedly exclaim to me how "paramedics have an unfair advantage" over the regular medical students... "you guys excel at clinical way too much." Still to this day, I'm not exactly sure whether he meant it as a bad thing...
Many doctors and other clinicians will disagree with me on this, but seeing a patient is seeing a patient, regardless of what certification you carry in your pocket. They will argue that it is different seeing a patient as a doctor or seeing a patient as a nurse or a paramedic or an EMT... That kind of rhetoric comes only from someone who never did medicine before getting his current clinician level.
Watching a CHF-er drown in his own fluid is the same whether you are a doctor, nurse, paramedic, emt or a CNA. The smell of sepsis doesn't get much different the higher up a ladder you go. When a patient pukes on my white doctor coat, it looks the same as when the same patient puked on my paramedic uniform the day before. When a nurse gets blood on her scrubs, or a paramedic gets blood on his boots, that blood looks remarkably the same on my white physician coat.
The higher up a ladder you go, the more you know, and the more you realize how much there is left to learn... the patients do not change, they are the same patients, you just change... your skills get better, your BSoMeter improves as does your S#$+Ometer... and your willingness to ask for help also improves (for most of us).
So the question is, are you gonna be a doctor? My answer is, I am, but I'm gonna be a paramedic first.
Paramedic to Physician. #paramedic #EMS #doctor #physician #EMT