What does an EMT Do?

An EMT is an Emergency Medical Technician, the people who save your lives on an ambulance. There are three categories for the EMT and they are Basic, Intermediate, and Paramedic. An EMT-B (Basic) can and will save your life but is limited to what equipment they use and drugs they are allowed to administer. An EMT-I (Intermediate) has access to quite a few life saving drugs and equipment. An EMT-P (Paramedic) has full access to all of the drugs allowed on an ambulance and all of the life saving equipment. I am an EMT-B but I have saved quite a few lives and have seen some pretty disturbing things. In this hub I will share with you some of my most memorable experiences on the ambulance. They may not be the worst of the goriest but they are my most memorable experiences.

It was a cold winter day and we had received a call to go to a residence for a woman that had fallen on the ice while taking out her garbage. We immediately got into the ambulance with our lights and sirens blaring when we arrived to the home to see that the patient was not currently outside. We grabbed our equipment and headed into the house where we seen our patient holding her arm. (Now I'm not sure how many of you have broken a bone or seen a broken bone but for some reason, I get a little squeamish when I see a body part that is deformed with no broken skin.) When I went to assess her arm, I had noticed that she did in fact break her arm because her bone was broken in half and you could see the bone trying to come out of  her skin. I tried very hard to splint her arm and I just couldn't! It was my very first broken bone that I had to bandage, so I asked my partner if he wouldnt mind helping me get her arm into a stable position. We were able to get her bandaged up and take her to our near by ER, but it was just one of those day where I couldn't handle stabilization by myself.

 The firehouse that I had worked for runs along side some train tracks. Our nearest hospital is only 2 blocks away but the tracks do separate the firehouse and hospital. We had received a call that car was struck by the train. With adrenaline rushing full force, I hopped into my rig and off went my partner and I. We arrive on scene to see that there might have been some miss communication because it was a car accident on the train tracks. The accident did not seem like it was anything major, so I got out to check the patients and all of them were OK and refused to go to the hospital. Well just as we were getting done checking on the patients a train was coming. Thankfully the engineer on the train knew about the accident because our chief had called it in so the train was stopped near the accident. The firemen were tending to the vehicles and working on getting them off to a safe place so the train could move through. "BEEP!" BEEP!" BEEP!" Our pagers went off while we were on the scene to help a man who had fallen and passed out at a gas station. My partner and I told the firemen that we would take it because all of our patients didn't want medical help so we rushed to the gas station where our next patient was. When we had arrived on scene there WAS a man who was on the ground but was alert and talking when we got there. So we did our assessment on the patient and decided that he needed to go to the hospital to get check out because he shouldn't have passed out like that. We get the patient into the ambulance and start our journey to the hospital. Our lights and sirens were so loud and I was the one driving but it seemed like no one wanted to move for us. I then got to the area where I needed to cross the railroad tracks and UGH!!!!! I totally forgot that the train was stopped so I started to yell "OH F**K! Totally unprofessional I know but It slipped because our patient was starting to pass out again. I then gathered myself and thankfully our patent was a little hard of hearing because I quickly yelled "OH MAN! I'M SORRY SR. BUT THIS TRUCK IS IN THE WAY! OH TRUCK! MOVE!" as a cover up. It worked and I was very thankful and learned my lesson to remember where I was at all times. Our patient got to the hospital and was OK.

It was a perfect summer night, we were all sitting outside the small towns firehouse, talking away like we did and having a great time. I had worked at a volunteer department so I was basically working for free and because of that some of our members were from the town we worked. I was an outsider because it took me like 10 minutes to get to the firehouse but the town itself was only a square mile. So as we were deep in our conversations our pagers went us to let us know that we were to go to a house that was on fire. A house to be on fire is a big deal in a small town so everybody was super excited until... We arrived on scene and realized that if was one of our fellow firefighters house. We did in fact have a working house fire but it was a worse case scenario because it became personal. Since we were first on the scene, we became the "go to" EMTs for any other EMTs that were to arrive on the scene. The house was definitely on fire and was obvious by the flames shooting out of the front and side windows. It became super scary real fast because we had thought that there was family in the house. Thankfully after about 2 minutes we were able to confirm that no one was in the house. As the firefighters knocked out the fire, other crews were sent inside the house to make sure there wasn't any 'hot spots' to douse with water. After the crew had put out the fire with the hose it was time for overhauling. It's when the firemen pull down debris that would be unstable and to double make sure there is no more fire lurking.  As the everybody was going in and out of the house they had to use the stairs in which there was quite a bit of debris on. As I went to make sure everybody was ok I had noticed that the debris on the stairs wasn't only debris. There had in fact been a fatality or death. It was a black cat that had been trying to escape the flames and smoke only to make it out of the house but die from the smoke inhalation. Poor kitty had been stepped on so many times and not a single person was aware of it. Trust me if they would have know the cat would have been picked up much sooner. All in all every human was just fine which was the main thing. Aside from that it took me about 6 months after this fire to stop think that my house was going to burn down every second. It hit home with me but thankfully I can stop being such a worry wart because life can not be lived that way.  Enjoy every day because unexpected things happen all the time.

 Well I hope you enjoyed my stories, I swear they are 100% true and are my experiences. If you have any questions about how to become and EMT feel free to ask. If you would like to share a good story with me, please do!