After I finished high school, I underwent 16 years of additional training—college, medical school, surgical residency, surgical fellowship—before I started a real job. I was 34 years old and deep red broke.
Finally, I thought, I am done with the educational waterboarding.
Not so fast.
The last 32 years have been a continuous, Sisyphean series of courses, seminars, meetings, recertifications, and general shakedowns to make sure I am “up to date.” All these, of course, involve substantial fees. If you do not pay these fees you will be listed as “non-certified.” How this is different from threatening to break your windows is unclear to me.
Having college educated three children, I can say with authority that the higher ed system makes the Mafia look like the Cub Scouts.
So having retired from surgical practice and moving to the fabulous Swan Valley, I’m done with that, right?
Not so fast. It turns out my newly minted Emergency Medical Technician certificate requires frequent polishing as well.
So, this last Sunday our group, the mighty Condon Quick Response Unit, engaged in all sorts of skills refreshers.
One of the stations was the trauma scenario, where one of us describes some sort of horrible crash with multiple victims and even more dissembled body parts. The person being quizzed needs to assess the scene and prioritize care, direct resources, and try not to freak out. My favorite take from this exercise was to be sure to look in the trees. Sometimes unrestrained people are thrown from cars and end up in trees.
Another station was the placement of various airways in people who are unconscious or have blocked air passages. I am going to make it a life goal to never have one of those shoved in me. One of them is this frankly obscene device that goes down the gizzard, which then directs air into the windpipe. Look up gizzard in the medical dictionary.
A raw bleeding wound can be improved with “packing,” which involves stuffing gauze into the cut or abrasion and then wrapping it. For this exercise, we had a package of cow liver which was sliced up to simulate wounds. Liver is disgusting anyway, and my experience with bleeding in human livers is that of extreme frustration. Liver bleeds a lot, and it is so mushy it is hard to sew. On really big liver cracks we’ve resorted to stuffing full size bath towels around the organ, then coming back the next day to the OR and hoping the bleeding has slowed down. Elegant.
We all learned, or relearned, a lot. Working with these folks, who gave up an entire weekend day, unpaid, to care for their community is an affirming experience. I feel good about getting crunched by a semi in this area given this level of dedication. That didn’t come out right. I don’t actually feel good about being crunched in general, but confident I will be well cared for.
In a previous session, Ronnie Matthew showed me how to use the new blood sugar tester. This time, he refreshed my memory on how to measure the size of a nasopharyngeal airway. Ronnie also dug the foundation of my house. Everyone here is someone else in real life. I don’t consider finding people in trees as real life.
If there are two overriding themes in trauma, they are “drunk” and “unrestrained.” I did a very large number of facial fracture and facial laceration repairs, and very few of the ones from car crashes were belted in. I don’t understand why people don’t wear seat belts, or worse yet don’t restrain their kids. I am not some woke deep state gubmint dude. Starting as a nurse’s aide 50 years ago and seeing thousands of jacked up trauma victims, I’ve formed an impression of what works and what lands you in the morgue or worse. And there is worse.
On a cheerier note, at least I didn’t get charged for my training, although there was the veiled threat of disbarment, or whatever the term is for disgraced EMTs.
I guess I will stay “up to date” until I die. I like my windows.
Reader Comments(0)