Study Group

I'm hosting a study group at my house today for our EMT class. I can't believe that we have our midterm in less than two weeks. Time has been flying by; we've already finished our third week of class - only seven more left. Gulp!

I got to be a "victim" last Friday for a ATLS class held at SF General. ATLS is Advanced Trauma Life Support. All of the students were doctors, residents & I believe there was one nurse practitioner. We were able to listen to some of the lecture portions which included a lot of the same information we were taught (ABCs! excpet they added D & E). They did exercises in patient triage during multiple casualty incidents - interesting to see what patients warranted advanced status and who needed to wait. Then we went to our moulage area. That's where they dressed us up and put makeup on us to simulate injuries. I was the victim of a fall from my roof and was unconscious (so not much acting taking place).

While I know that the doctors have many more tools at their disposal, sometimes I think they got tripped up in not keeping things simple. Some of them missed a major trauma sign that I had and I even died once. The nurse who was helping in the scenario was very good at directing the doctor towards different things. She would say "are you sure you don't want to look at anything else while the collar is off" or "would you like me to open some IVs or run some blood tests for you?" I'm very thankful that there is a team of people who work on you during a trauma emergency. It's amazing how much people can forget!

I will follow up with pictures next week as I need to get them from my instructor. In all there were four volunteers: fall victim, crushing injury victim (wall fell on him), stabbing victim (domestic dispute - his wife was unhappy with him), and a fight victim who was also stabbed in the back. I think the fight guy died twice!

This is a tough class but I'm glad I'm in it. I feel like I'm really learning a lot and my confidence level has increased, especially as I learn more about what to do and how to treat people.