Day One

It was really good.

It was spent like the first day of any class. The manager of the program (the guy who interviewed me) gave a little talk about expectations, then the main instructor explained who he was and his expectations, many opportunities were given to ask questions.

I like that policies and procedures regarding grades and attendance and everything was very well presented, and plenty of resources that were available were explained.

The educational philosphy of the school and the instructor was very much in line with what I believe, so I was really happy about that. The instructor said "This is Adult Education" no less than 4 times in the course of the day, which leads me to believe that his attitudes regarding some academic policies jive VERY well with my own.

Something that I found interesting was that they had the whole works split into separate "courses" so that if someone was very strong in the book work, but weak in pharmacology, then they wouldn't be able to squeeze by with a passing grade. Some folks may consider this harsh, but Medicine isn't a field that you want to screw around with, Emergency Medicine even less so.

I felt like the program is VERY much interested in establishing a core level of competency as a Paramedic, as opposed to just "teaching to the test".

I probably have the least time working on an ambulance, I guess we'll see how that goes. There was a good mix of folks from various areas and services, a lot of Southern New Hampshire and Boston. I might just buy and wear a Yankees cap just to be funny one day. But I should do that during baseball season for best response.

We covered the first three chapters in the book. There were powerpoint presentations, but luckily (unlike a lot of my college) the instructor didn't just read the slides, he kept the class relatively engaged.

There wasn't a lot of "war stories" either. Which is understandable, its kind of tough to get into those when discussing "the Well-Being of the EMT-P"