For Students: 6 Second ECG Simulator

Just thought I'd share this quickly for those Student Paramedics out there that stumble across this.

A colleague first showed the 6 Second ECG Simulator to me and it's a good way to pass 10 minutes of your time every so often to see what your interpretations are like. Arguably there's more on here than we need to know - but you can never have enough knowledge!

I'd recommend going through the teaching sessions for the rhythms before having a go at the game, and certainly stay clear of this until you've read into ECGs or started them at Uni.

Diary: Weeks 14,15 & 16 - Back to Uni

So Instead of writing week by week of my return to Uni, I appreciate it's probably less interesting to read than zipping around on Blue Lights so I thought that I'd condense my first three weeks into one post instead.

Coming back to Uni after Christmas and the excitement of Placement was harder than I'd thought. Initially I found myself lacking that get up and go with my home studies after lectures each day. Before placement I'd happily sit for a few hours when I got back to my room and study things around what I'd learnt or read ahead on things I was going to learn but now I was having to force myself to do the same. After a few days I gave myself a kick up the back-side and just remembered how bad I wanted this and how hard I'd worked to get here and I was fine again.

Seeing all of my colleagues again has been great, everyone has their own war stories to share from Placement and hearing about their experiences helps my own learning too.

Read on to find out what I've been learning about since I got back!

Diary: Week 13 - slightly late!

So I got caught up in Christmas and New Years and gorging myself with food and alcohol and generally not needing to worry too much about University and my Paramedic training for a couple of weeks so I'm abit behind. However 2015 is here and I'm back in the swing of things at Uni for 5 weeks, I thought I'd update my diary for my second and final week on my Ambulance Placement which I spent on the Rapid Response Vehicle (one of the Ambulance Cars you see driving around everywhere...).

Read on to see how it went...

Diary: Week 12

Week 12 brought my first week out on the Ambulance. This meant meeting my Mentor for the first time, getting to know those I'd be working with on my Station, and getting into the swing of things out on the road.

This week I was on a double crewed ambulance (DCA), this meant working with a Technician and my Paramedic mentor. On my first shift, I learned what equipment and consumables should be on the back of the vehicle and where to get anything that we were short of - by the end of my 4th shift I was comfortable doing this without prompting after seeing what we seem to use alot of and not alot of during out shift.

Read on to find out how the rest of my week went.

Diary: Week 10

Week 10 brought my first week of Placement. Switching from predictable days in University to back to back 12 hour shifts was 'interesting' - especially when my housemates insisted in screaming the house down when they came back drunk at 2am in the middle of those shifts... twice. So for anyone reading who is due to start Uni - try and get housed with other Health Care Students!

Read on to find out how I got on...

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

The Health Care Professions Council... And You!

Well it's that time of year where those aspiring Paramedics out there start to look at preparing your Personal Statements and battling through UCAS to get your University applications in.

With that in mind I thought I'd dedicate a little bit of cyber-space to the Health Care Professions Council (HCPC), why? Well you'll need to learn about them at some point and in all of my Interviews last year I was asked how the HCPC relates to the Paramedic, if you're really clever you'll also look at the HCPC Paramedic Standards of Proficiency and the Student Ethics guide and try to use those key values and standards and reflect on them in your Personal Statement, so read on...

Diary: Week 2

The first 'proper' week of my Course this week - and don't I know it.

We've been bombarded with Anatomy and Physiology, professionalism, and Basic Life Support for both Children and Adults this

RESOURCE: In-Depth Bag-Valve Mask (BVM) Analysis

Good afternoon readers,

I'll be quiet for 3 weeks as I'm off out to do some Medical work out in Germany, but before I leave I thought I'd share with you what I thought is an excellent in-depth analysis of best practice use of the BVM - it might be basics to some but it never hurts to refresh something that's so simple to use, but can be devastating if you get wrong.

American College of Emergency Physicians - BVM

Hope someone finds this useful!

RESOURCE: Atrial Fibrillation + Flutter

So amongst my own musings and original content on this blog I like to try and post bits and bobs I come across online that current students might find useful - This time it's an excellent video revision of recognising Atrial Fibrillation and Flutters on an ECG and also the Anatomy & Physiology behind it:



Original source: Acadoodle

The Student Paramedic Shopping List

So with my University start date looming, I'm obviously putting some money into the equipment I need for when I begin my journey as a Student Paramedic.

Now before you start parting with cash, get in contact with either Students currently on your course or a member of staff that lectures for your course. I opted to email one of the course leads and asked them for an essentials and nice to have list of things for their students, here's what I'm buying:

Paramedic Career Development

Hello readers,

I thought I'd devote some cyber-space to something all aspiring Student Paramedics should know about for Interviews - Career pathways and specialisations once you are qualified. I was asked this on two of my Interviews which made me glad that I had done my research, one interview I was even asked how I would like to specialise later on down the line if I was successful and why I chose that particular career path.

So here we go with some of the options available to a Paramedic with a few years under your belt:

DIARY: The road so far

It's been twelve months now, twelve months since my Fianceé convinced me (and it took alot of convincing...) that despite what I thought, I could make it into University even with my rough road with Education in life so far. I was convinced that me and Education were never meant to be - if you told the 16, 18, even 25 year old me that I would one day study at University I would have laughed and walked away! However with a shove from my better half I enrolled on a College Access course with a view of taking my Medical Career to the next level and making the jump from Combat Medic to a fully qualified State Registered Paramedic.

RESOURCE: Easy 4 H's & T's revision (ACLS)

Hello Readers,

Pretty good video below on the 4 H's and T's otherwise known as the reversible causes of a Cardiac Arrest. Pretty good for revision, whilst there's plenty of material out there for ACLS - I think this is one of the better revision videos going.




Hope this helps!

One to Watch: Junior Paramedics

Just a quick one really for prospective Student Paramedics out there, it's worth a watch of BBCs latest documentary "Junior Paramedics" JUNIOR PARAMEDICS EP 1 - all the episodes are on iPlayer at the moment but if you're reading this a few months from now and this link no longer works then just search the program title in YouTube and catch them there.

The series provides a decent look at what to expect on your first ever placement, it's a little cheesy and it doesn't really show you much of the Uni side of the course but nevertheless it's not a bad insight really!