April 19th

Today I did a shift on a private ambulance. As a part of my class, all students need to complete a 10 hour shift on an ambulance with 2 real EMTs to observe what it is like. I started my day waking up at 6 am to travel to Remsen Ave, Brooklyn. I was really nervous that I would get in the way, but I got there, everyone was really nice and welcomed me into the building. I got in the ambulance I would be in for the day, and the partners were making sure that the ambulance was clean and that they had all of the supplies that they would need for the day. This check is called a “part 800.” This was a very thorough check, because it would be bad if they get to the scene and are missing supplies. We then left to wait in a parking lot. Almost immediately, their radio went off and we got a message for our first patient. He was upstairs so they brought what is called a “stair chair” to transport him back on and load him back onto the stretcher. We then transported him to a hospice. We had about 5 more calls that day. I was surprised that the majority of the time we spent was desanitizing the stretchers and ambulance. Although thinking about it it makes sense because there are a lot of diseases involved with ambulances. I was also surprised about the amount of calls we got. I had assumed that there would be a lot of wait time, but we had a lot of calls. They said it depends on the day, some days are really busy and some days are not; some days there are very intense cases and some days are mostly transport. Overall I had a really good time!!