thanks, much appreciated and congrats on doing so well. I probobly swing by there tommorow after work. I'm not completely worried, I just wanna ace everything the 1st time, like u did
Thanks man. I wouldn't worry about acing it too much, just make sure you're prepared enough to pass it...$70 is too much money to retake it again and most of what you learn is after class, so you're essentially being tested half on stuff you'll have to relearn in the field. For example, it's one thing to assess a "patient" in a classroom or take vitals on him...entirely different one assessing a real pt and trying to get a BP on an old person with crappy veins while the ambulance is bouncing around. Plus the patient scenarios in class were useless compared to the real world...you rarely have one straightforward thing going wrong with a patient, especially in the elderly. Hell, the call I ran tonight I had a 79 y/o male who presented with audible rales, SOB, with a history of COPD and CHF. C/C? I put SOB, but he refused his Lasix med this AM, which caused him to develop SOB w/71% O2 sat on room air at 2 PM, which only went up to 80% on 2 lpm O2 via NC that the SNF placed him on (if you're wondering why only 2 lpm on a 71% sat, 1. it's a SNF, don't expect any heroes
and 2. pt had COPD and again, SNF nurses are stupid)...now the dispatch information was COPD exacerbation but actually it was a CHF-related issue, so more correctly it was SOB secondary to CHF exacerbation.
Although I wouldn't have known that unless my partner was a medic and knew to ask about whether the pt was on Lasix, and if so, whether he had taken his meds. No pedal edema or anything noteworthy in lung sounds either (outside the left upper lobe being diminished and lower lobes being absent), so unless I had a medic around, I wouldn't have had a damn clue what caused his SOB.
So yeah, just pass the stupid thing, you'll learn all the stuff you actually need to know (or in this case want to know, since this call just required treatment for SOB, not figuring out what caused it or anything) once you're working/volunteering anyway.
