Memorising the Glasgow Coma Scale

So this one is for my fellow Student Paramedics out there.

I remember being introduced to the Glasgow Coma Scale years ago by the Army and was told I would have to memorise it. At first I had a little laminated card I made with it on that was with my Aide Memoire that I'd made and carried around to remember those obscure things you don't use very often.

However as always, it catches up with you and on one particular course there was a chance that it would come up on an exam so I had to memorise it. I tried loads of different ways of doing it but stumbled across this blog post on a US EMTs site that actually made it pretty manageable - have a read through the main article and check out some of the comments at the bottom for other ideas on memorising this particular beast.

Hope this helps someone!

The EMT Spot - Memorising GCS

Combat Medical Technicians

So I came across a very good article this morning where a CMT (Combat Medical Technician) has answered some questions and provided photos of the typical amount of equipment both personal and medical by a Dismounted Patrol Medic on Operations (Afghanistan in this case).

It's worth a read I believe for Student Paramedics or infact Registered Paramedics that stumble across this, from experience I can tell you that disciplining yourself to take only the essentials and in the right quantity is difficult - it's very easy to load up on all the Med Kit you've ever been given so you can deal with even the most inconceivable incidents and injuries, but you realise quickly you've got to carry all of this stuff and be able to move and fight with it for hours or even days at a time - that's when the difficult decisions come in and you really have to work off of the most likely casualty scenarios and equip yourself accordingly.

Anyway! Here's the Article:

Typical Equipment Carried by British Combat Medic on Ops

I hope someone finds it an interesting read! With regards to this  Blog, I'll be starting Uni in September and at that point there will be an atleast once per week update from myself about what I've been upto so that prospective Student Paramedics can read about the journey they will take too!

Paramedics and the Military

So I thought I'd start April off with something I know a little about. If you've come across this blog it's likely that you would like to become a Paramedic sometime in the future, there are a few Career options open to you once you have successfully attained State Registration - Ambulance Trusts are the obvious ones but there's scope to work Privately, in remote/hostile environments abroad or at sea, or as another option: Within the Military. Now we're specifically looking at the Army and the RAF here as the Navy don't have Paramedics within the service (they have Medical Assistants instead). So let's look at how these two Services use Paramedics.