Mendham Borough First Aid Squad
  • About Us
    • What We Do
    • Our Volunteers
    • MFAS FAQ
    • Squad History
  • Volunteer
    • How to Help
    • Cadet Program
    • Membership FAQ
  • Donate
  • Squad Resources
  • Contact Us
    • Get a File of Life

Class is in session!

1/5/2016

0 Comments

 
And so it begins, not with a whimper or a bang, but rather with a 2-and-a-half hour orientation session last night. 24 hopeful future EMTs, split about 50/50 between men and women, from squads around Morris, Union and Somerset counties.

I'm taking my EMT course through Atlantic Training Center at the Morris County Public Safety Academy in Parsippany, although there certainly are many other training organizations offering EMT courses in New Jersey.

The key message last night was pretty simple: Becoming an EMT is hard work. Be prepared to put in the time, study, practice and study some more. Classroom lectures, reading assignments, online lectures and quizzes, in-class written and practical exams... plus 10 hours of clinical rotation in a hospital emergency department or with the Mobile ICU (MICU, aka paramedics). Clearly, this is not something you can coast through with some last minute cramming.

One instructor explained that they weren't there to help us pass the course. Their goals were to turn out the best EMTs possible, and while they'd be more than happy to help us when we need it or when we ask for help, but ultimately this has to be something that we, as students, really wanted to succeed at.

The goal, as he explained it, was to teach us to "act, not react".
EMS work isn't black and white. It's constant shades of grey, and he noted that the goals of the course were to give us the skills to be successful, not ensure we've memorized the answers to a test. While it's easy to react to someone involved in a car accident with a broken leg, the risk of failing to act appropriately in recognizing the overall injuries of the patient is to end up with a perfectly splinted and packaged for transport corpse, because you missed a more critical life-threatening injury.

Of course, NJ State requirements still mean we have to attend all classes and pass all exams with a minimum 70% pass rate, as well as the state certification exam itself. But the course and instructors aren't just trying to "teach us the test."

I didn't realize that, while there are national standards as to what content must be covered in the course, trainers have latitude as to the order in which they cover this material, so my experience and the way we progress through the materials may not match those by other training organizations.

I also learned that there are some differences between the NJ State Certification and the National Registry of EMTs (NREMT) certification. While both are recognized in NJ as valid certifications for EMTs, they have different ongoing requirements for recertification and Continuing Education Units (CEUs) required to maintain certifications. 

Ashley Haynes, one of our Cadet members looking towards becoming a doctor, is also taking the EMT course.  We'll probably have a very different personal experience going through this course, but we both agree... we're excited to get started.

BRING IT ON!
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Author

    Jon Alperin, one of our MFAS volunteers, shares his journey to becoming an NJ certified EMT.

    Picture

    from the Start

    Here is Jon's journey, presented in time order:
    • T-30 & counting
    • A look back at my first year with this squad
    • 1500 pages of EMT know-how
    • Class is in Session!
    • We pick things up, we put things down
    • The head bone is connected to the neck bone...
    • Questions? We've got a million of them...
    • Practice is vital, and vitals take practice
    • Getting ready for the 1st test
    • Taking a breather
    • Be still my beating heart
    • Gearing up for mid-term exams
    • A peak inside a PSAP
    • Urgency, not emergency
    • Paramedics - Our partners in success
    • Under pressure
    • Around the bend, the end is in sight
    • From beginning to end
    • A grim way to learn
    • The toughest lesson
    • One behind, one ahead
    • Tom Petty had it right...
    • Just gonna let this speak for itself
    • The end of the beginning

    Archives

    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015

    Categories

    All
    Anatomy
    Assessments
    Cadet Members
    Cardiac
    Certifications
    Childbirth
    Circulation
    CPR
    C Spine Precautions
    C-Spine Precautions
    Dispatch
    EMT Classes
    EMT Skills
    Fire Rehab
    Geriatrics
    Illness
    Mechanism Of Injury (MOI)
    Medical Emergencies
    Motivation
    Nature Of Illness (NOI)
    Nervous System
    Operations
    Pediatrics
    Respiration
    Safety
    Terminology
    Trauma
    Vital Signs
    Volunteering

    RSS Feed

    Find us on Facebook
    Facebook.com/MendhamFAS
24 E Main Street, Mendham NJ 07945
​© 2021 Mendham First Aid Squad. All rights reserved. 

Home    Volunteer    Donate    Contact 

  • About Us
    • What We Do
    • Our Volunteers
    • MFAS FAQ
    • Squad History
  • Volunteer
    • How to Help
    • Cadet Program
    • Membership FAQ
  • Donate
  • Squad Resources
  • Contact Us
    • Get a File of Life