Trauma
I thought I’d type up an entry to let you know what else has been going on. Early January I went on a Trauma course for the weekend, on Monday morning I woke with aches in muscles I didn’t know existed. The course had an extremely practical nature and we were outside for quite a bit of it in the cold, wet weather. The Trauma course is an advanced course for people in the Red Cross who want to become Paramedic Crew in the ambulances. It involves more hands-on stuff having to see to head, abdominal, spinal injuries as well as fractures and other bits and pieces and we play with monitoring equipment too. If I go into the course in depth I would be here all night but my brain and body hasn’t had that much exercise for months! Playing with the long boards was fun. Goodness me I don’t think I have ever sweated as much. We walked in on one of numerous senarios faced with someone who, by looks of, fell off a chair (of course) so we suspected spinal injuries and played the safe route and got her on the board. We had to use a scoop first and anyway it took us about 40 minutes in total to imobilise the ‘casualty’ on the board. Hard work. Very hard work!
I was really nervous at first because everyone else on the course had been on the course before, but it was my first time and they were a lot more experienced than me.. it wasn’t a full course either, technically, I shouldn’t have been on it but my service manager knows I want to get on the ambulances and sit my IHCD so he arranged so I could go on it.
Anyway I thought I’d have to wait until June/July to sit the full course but apparently if I’ve done the practical side and feel confident enough to go with it, all I need now is learn the theory (body works, anatomy etc) then I can sit the IHCD exam in April.