I got a lot of support and encouragement in this thread and I wanted to give everyone an update on how she’s doing with her AIT.
She’s at Fort Sam Houston doing medic training, and today, she passed her EMT test! She is now a certified EMT!
I don’t know how long civilian test prep is, but in the Army, she had seven weeks of training, which I imagine is rather intense.
As a result of her passing the EMT test, she is allowed to wear civilian clothes while off duty. She’s getting paramedic training now, but will not have to take the paramedic certification test. That’s another level of training which she could apply for.
Here’s how I compare military vs civilian training.
Consider in a civilian university/college a 5 credit hour course. It meets 5 days a week for one hour for 10 weeks in a Quarter system. But those classes aren’t really 1 hour long, they’re 50 minutes. So, that works out to 42 2/3s hours of instruction per quarter. When I was an instructor in the CG, I had the class for 37 hours of instruction per week. So, I figure your daughter got 259 hours of training. Classroom and Lab.
The training is intense in that, unlike, say an associate’s degree program, they’re not taking any other courses, no humanities, social sciences, or electives. They’re just concentrating on medic stuff.
“The paramedic thinks i’m clever cos i play guitar
I think she’s clever cos she stops people dying”
Awesome awesome awesome for your daughter! I hope she is very proud of herself! She has made her noble decision to join the military even more noble, in my eyes
Boast away! You both should be proud.
Medics saves lives.
At the risk of showing my age, a Medivac helo was a welcome sight. My congrats to your daughter.
I’m pretty sure that EMT training as a civilian is more or less the same as you described as the military novel. You don’t need to take any elective courses or humanities to get an EMT cert.
Hooray for ivy daughter! She has earned the bragging, and so have you, for keeping a level head when things were rough. (And hooray for medics in general!)
She actually failed the first time she took it, but she buckled down and studied her ass off and passed it the second time. The Army lets you take the test three times before they reclassify you. So I think that says something, that she dusted herself off and tackled it again.
EMT training is about 140 hours (may vary a bit from state to state but there is a national standard by NREMT). Of course, the standard EMT course doesn’t have PT requirements and other hardships of military life, plus I’m sure the Army has some additional requirements and protocols specific to battlefield trauma and treatment. I don’t know what the washout rate is but getting it on the second attempt is no shame as long as she has mastered the material. Congratulations to her.
Thanks for the update ivylass. I’m glad to hear she’s made it.
you said she’s getting the paramedic training now, is she considering getting a paramedic certification?
Her long term goal, she says, is to be a doctor. Baby steps.
She’s already explaining homeostasis and hypotension on Facebook. She told me yesterday that she had a rubber tube shoved up her nose and had to perform a tracheotomy. I asked if she was having fun. Her exact words, “I’m having a fucking blast.”
That’s really awesome. It’s really easy to fail or stumble and think, “obviously I can’t do this shit, forget it.” Being willing to dust herself off and try again is one of the BEST traits you can have.
¿ Thumbs up, looking forward to hearing about when she gets the paramed cert and becomes Doc and is on her way to becoming Dr.