Some updates
A college update: Finals week for the fall semester at Alvernia College has come and gone.....finally!! It seemed like everybody was just ready to get out of there for a while. People are always asking me how long I will be in school yet. It will be the spring of 2009 when I graduate with a BSN from Alvernia, so I have 2 1/2 school years to go, or in other words, 5 semesters plus optional summer semesters. At this point my postgraduate plans are to take some specialty advanced pre-hospital training right away. For now though, the real fun will start this next semester when we get out into clinical rotations. They say that the spring semester of the sophomore year in nursing at Alvernia has a way of eliminating a number of the students. I'm not entirely sure what all to expect, but hopefully all will go well. I know we will be taking a pharmacology class this spring as well, and they say that class is hard for most students.
Fire/EMS training update: I got my results back from the Basic Vehicle Rescue Technician (BVRT) class. The instructor told us at the end of the class that if we get the "big envelope in a couple of weeks" we will know right away without opening it that we passed, but that if we get a little envelope, we would probably need to retest. Well, the big envelope arrived here on Friday. So now I'm a VRT! Maybe there will be some time to a run a rescue call or two over Christmas break.
Also, as if finals week at college wasn't enough, I was involved in a Pre-hospital Trauma Life Support (PHTLS) class which was sponsored by Schuylkill Valley EMS. The PHTLS class was modeled after the ATLS (advanced trauma life support) class that physicians are taught. Those of you in the medical field may be familiar with that class or may have at least heard of it before. The PHTLS class focuses on training the EMS or pre-hospital provider to complete their rapid trauma assessments quicker and more thoroughly, and to improve patient care by determining which patients meet the "load-and-go" criteria. Prioritizing the significance of the patient's injuries and determining which ones are the most important to treat first is emphasized, and various hands-on treatment techniques are practiced in this class. Most of what is taught is a review from EMT class or Paramedic school, but it does go into more depth in some areas.
There was a written and a practical test at the end of class. For the practical test they paired us up in teams of two and gave us mock patient care scenarios. They tried to make it rather realistic too. My patient was a confused middle aged male who had been ejected from his vehicle during a crash. I was informed that he had crashed into a cement wall while leading police on a high speed chase. When we initiated our encounter with the patient (the part was being played by one of our medics from Schuylkill Valley) I was surprised to find him still conscious and sitting semi-upright in the middle of the roadway. He was disoriented, was tachycardic, was hyperventilating, and had bilateral compound femur fractures and multiple bruises including some on the chest. Had this been a real patient and not a simulation, obviously the guy would have been in bad shape. To make a long story short, this guy was definitely a "load-and-go". Overall, what I got out of the class was a better understanding of the basic physiology of shock, some good hands-on review training, a really good textbook to study, and a wish for more good training like that.
After all of this training - college, vehicle rescue, and PHTLS - I thought it would be good to do something else for a change, so I had a bunch of friends over to shoot clay birds. It was a sort of stress relieving mechanism, as was getting out doors to hunt a few weeks ago. Usually I like to have some friends over to shoot clays before the hunting season starts, but with all of the schoolwork and other training I took this fall, there really wasn't any time for that. The guys still wanted to have a shoot anyway, so I told them to wait till school is over. My brother and his wife are youth advisers at their church. The guys from their youth group were also thinking about having a clay shoot sometime, so we combined forces and threw a big shoot for everybody. I never counted, but I'm guessing there was about 30+ people here. Even my dad shot a couple of clays. We had three throwers going some of the time, and all afternoon it sounded like someone was constantly setting of strings of blackcats, only it was louder. I think everybody had fun, and I was glad to see that the landowners of the field we were in come over to shoot. Earlier this year their family had some tough times. The dad of the family was burnt badly early this spring while working on the farm, and was flown to the burn center in Allentown. A couple of months later his son was involved in a serious four wheeler accident and nearly bled to death, but was flown to Hershey Medical Center. They are both doing significantly better now, especially the dad. They came to the clay shoot, but the son didn't shoot very for very long. He said the recoil from the gun was disturbing his clavicle, which had been broken during the accident.
So, that is what has been going on lately. Besides celebrating the holidays, during the winter break, I will be building and fixing silo's with a "Jo Wenger" crew in Lancaster County, just like I did over the summer. LOL!! Maybe I'll pick up some more of the PA Dutch dialect. :-) Also, I have an interview after Christmas at Hershey Medical Center. I had applied there about a month ago for a 2007 summer nursing externship. I am one of about 90 applicants so far, and usually about 45 are accepted. Hershey differentiates between post-sophomore and post-junior BSN students by offering Extern #1 and Extern #2 respectively. Of the 45 total students accepted into those positions, 15 of them are Extern 1's. I don't know how many of the 90 applicants are sophomores applying for those 15 Extern #1 positions.
That is all for now; I must get going. I'm not sure how busy work will be over the winter break, and I'm not sure how much time I will have to be blogging or e-mailing. Even so, I still always enjoy hearing from all of you. Post a comment on this blog or e-mail me at the address listed at the top of this page.
Fire/EMS training update: I got my results back from the Basic Vehicle Rescue Technician (BVRT) class. The instructor told us at the end of the class that if we get the "big envelope in a couple of weeks" we will know right away without opening it that we passed, but that if we get a little envelope, we would probably need to retest. Well, the big envelope arrived here on Friday. So now I'm a VRT! Maybe there will be some time to a run a rescue call or two over Christmas break.
Also, as if finals week at college wasn't enough, I was involved in a Pre-hospital Trauma Life Support (PHTLS) class which was sponsored by Schuylkill Valley EMS. The PHTLS class was modeled after the ATLS (advanced trauma life support) class that physicians are taught. Those of you in the medical field may be familiar with that class or may have at least heard of it before. The PHTLS class focuses on training the EMS or pre-hospital provider to complete their rapid trauma assessments quicker and more thoroughly, and to improve patient care by determining which patients meet the "load-and-go" criteria. Prioritizing the significance of the patient's injuries and determining which ones are the most important to treat first is emphasized, and various hands-on treatment techniques are practiced in this class. Most of what is taught is a review from EMT class or Paramedic school, but it does go into more depth in some areas.
There was a written and a practical test at the end of class. For the practical test they paired us up in teams of two and gave us mock patient care scenarios. They tried to make it rather realistic too. My patient was a confused middle aged male who had been ejected from his vehicle during a crash. I was informed that he had crashed into a cement wall while leading police on a high speed chase. When we initiated our encounter with the patient (the part was being played by one of our medics from Schuylkill Valley) I was surprised to find him still conscious and sitting semi-upright in the middle of the roadway. He was disoriented, was tachycardic, was hyperventilating, and had bilateral compound femur fractures and multiple bruises including some on the chest. Had this been a real patient and not a simulation, obviously the guy would have been in bad shape. To make a long story short, this guy was definitely a "load-and-go". Overall, what I got out of the class was a better understanding of the basic physiology of shock, some good hands-on review training, a really good textbook to study, and a wish for more good training like that.
After all of this training - college, vehicle rescue, and PHTLS - I thought it would be good to do something else for a change, so I had a bunch of friends over to shoot clay birds. It was a sort of stress relieving mechanism, as was getting out doors to hunt a few weeks ago. Usually I like to have some friends over to shoot clays before the hunting season starts, but with all of the schoolwork and other training I took this fall, there really wasn't any time for that. The guys still wanted to have a shoot anyway, so I told them to wait till school is over. My brother and his wife are youth advisers at their church. The guys from their youth group were also thinking about having a clay shoot sometime, so we combined forces and threw a big shoot for everybody. I never counted, but I'm guessing there was about 30+ people here. Even my dad shot a couple of clays. We had three throwers going some of the time, and all afternoon it sounded like someone was constantly setting of strings of blackcats, only it was louder. I think everybody had fun, and I was glad to see that the landowners of the field we were in come over to shoot. Earlier this year their family had some tough times. The dad of the family was burnt badly early this spring while working on the farm, and was flown to the burn center in Allentown. A couple of months later his son was involved in a serious four wheeler accident and nearly bled to death, but was flown to Hershey Medical Center. They are both doing significantly better now, especially the dad. They came to the clay shoot, but the son didn't shoot very for very long. He said the recoil from the gun was disturbing his clavicle, which had been broken during the accident.
So, that is what has been going on lately. Besides celebrating the holidays, during the winter break, I will be building and fixing silo's with a "Jo Wenger" crew in Lancaster County, just like I did over the summer. LOL!! Maybe I'll pick up some more of the PA Dutch dialect. :-) Also, I have an interview after Christmas at Hershey Medical Center. I had applied there about a month ago for a 2007 summer nursing externship. I am one of about 90 applicants so far, and usually about 45 are accepted. Hershey differentiates between post-sophomore and post-junior BSN students by offering Extern #1 and Extern #2 respectively. Of the 45 total students accepted into those positions, 15 of them are Extern 1's. I don't know how many of the 90 applicants are sophomores applying for those 15 Extern #1 positions.
That is all for now; I must get going. I'm not sure how busy work will be over the winter break, and I'm not sure how much time I will have to be blogging or e-mailing. Even so, I still always enjoy hearing from all of you. Post a comment on this blog or e-mail me at the address listed at the top of this page.
posted by GKStauffer at 18:24
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