Hi All,
So I’m quitting my job today (woo hoo! 
) and taking a position filling in for someone on maternity leave December to June.
This summer, I’m thinking of taking some time off and taking a W-EMT course from the Wildnerness Medicine Institute. What’s going through an EMT course like? Would you do it again?
Not a one?
Any thoughts… this is the course I’m thinking of, by the way. Probably the June/July or July/Aug courses near Yosemite.
I took EMT training at UCLA back around 1990. I fear I can’t remember much of it after all of the intervening years. IIRC we learned basic first aid, CPR, how to assess the extent of injuries and how to treat them, how to stabilise necks and body parts to prevent further injury, etc. We did not learn how to insert IVs or other paramedic stuff. We had to spend a full shift helping out in an ER. I did that, taking blood pressure, asking questions, that sort of thing. At the end of six weeks I had an L.A. County EMT certificate.
One thing about the ER that I’ll never forget. A Black man was brought in with a bullet in his arm. IIRC someone said he and his cousin were sitting in a convertible and someone came up and shot them; the bullet passing through his cousin before winding up in his arm. (The cousin was not brought to this hospital.) The doctor said quietly to the nurse (who looked and sounded a lot like Amanda Pays), ‘Let’s stabilise him and pack him off to County.’ The nurse said, ‘He has insurance, doctor.’ ‘Oh,’ said the doctor, ‘I guess we can treat him here.’
That little vignette has left a bad taste in my mouth that has never gone away. It’s one of the things that makes me a supporter of a National Health Care system.
In any case, EMTs in L.A. got minimum wage so I never persued it as a career.
If you don’t get a lot of responses on this site, here’s another place where you can find EMTs: http://forums.drslounge.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&daysprune=30&f=96
Unfortunately, I don’t have any personal experiences to add here.
I was an EMT in the late 1970s. I enjoyed the course tremendously. After taking the classroom portion, we had to spend 40 hours in various departments of the hospital, learning a little bit about the different specialties. My favorites were the 8 hours I spent observing surgery, the 4 hours that I spent in the post-surgery recovery room and the 16 hours that I spent in the E. R.
I worked for a private ambulance company, doing patient transfers and special events. It was really interesting, and there are times that I wish I had kept my certification current.
I just took an EMT-B course this summer and am a member of a volunteer fire company.
It was a five-week class (all day) and was pretty intensive.
See here
I really enjoy it, but have no intention of going into it as a full-time job. I like belonging to the volunteer fire company.
I’m looking into getting a part-time job at a hospital as a patient care tech, though. Just to keep my skills up.
A W-EMT is gonna be a lot different from an urban one. I’ve taken Wilderness Advanced First Aid/EMT, Wilderness Medicine, and National Ski Patrol First Aid (which is generally considered equivalent to EMT). They’re all different.
Regular urban EMT will prolly focus on quick evaluation, immobilization, and transport. This is roughly equivalent to resort-style NSP first aid. Better to immobilize, stabilize, and transport than spend time “treating” someone. Immobilize=splint, stabilize=stop bleeding and admin O2, transport=…
As we used to say in NSP: load and go.
Wilderness EMT may focus more on these plus treatment strategies when you’re stuck way away from secondary life support. How do you deal with a femur fracture when you’re 2 days away from a hospital?
I loved every minute of my EMT training, BTW. Worth doing. You can certainly get more work as a guide, ranger, or whatever. Urban EMT is prolly very stressful; you’re gonna ride ambulances/fire engines and respond to a lot of heart attacks, shootings, and car accidents. You ask me, the best thing to do is go for pro ski patroller.
Yeah, I’m not really interested in urban EMT… I’ve already got a current WFR, and I’m most interested in the wilderness aspects of it (and that’s where I would anticipate using these skills anyway).
I’m not all that great a skiier, though, so I may have to skip on the Ski Patrol idea. 
I’ve not taken a WEMT course, but people I know who have say it’s a good class. For a standard EMT class you’d be doing some basic A&P, splinting, immobilization, CPR, defibrillation, and patient assessment. The wilderness part would add how to improvise a lot of those things and how to manage the patient for an extended period of time.
I really enjoyed both EMT class and Paramedic school. I learned a lot and got to spend time with some really cool people.
St. Urho
Paramedic