EMS EMT-BASIC Certification At Ohio Health Grant Medical Center

For my STEP project, I joined an EMS EMT-Basic certification program class at the Ohio Health Grant Medical Center in Columbus Downtown. This was a project that definitely pushed me out of my comfort zone and showed me the medical field in a very unique light. This course, provided by the Ohio Health hospital system, consisted of lecture-style evening classes and in-action clinical experience. My clinical experiences included riding with the Jackson Township Firestations for multiple shifts and hospital shifts at the Ohio Health Grant Medical Center on Town St. Currently. After completing the course certification for my Ohio license, I am working towards gaining my national certification through NREMT testing, which will allow me to be certified in most states and give me a wider window of opportunity in the world of medicine.

I have always been a very introverted person who thrived on the comfort of what I knew best, and learning book has always been very straightforward for me. When it came to street knowledge or application in the real world, I always felt like my hands were tied. Communication didn’t come easy, and the confidence to make firm decisions was only a dream to me. Walking into this project, I already knew this was going to be my biggest challenge yet. Another difficulty was learning to channel the negative energy that developed under pressure and stress the right way. For someone who wants to become a doctor to help people, I knew that the skills that were to be gained in the class were just the ones I needed to thrive as a medical student and later as a doctor. This was it! My real look in the world of medicine.  

The classroom experience during this project was in my control from the start. However, the clinical experience was a completely different story. At first, I was scared to voice the questions I needed to when interacting with patients. I was also nervous about touching my patients in my more physical examinations of their injuries. The one thing that was taught in this class that will resonate with me for the rest of my life is, as cheesy as it sounds, “the willpower to believe in yourself and let the true confidence in your mind and body flow.” This was a concept that was expressed through many different avenues in the class. As my clinical progressed, I became more clear cut with myself and the patients I interacted with, reminding myself of my purpose in this position and the importance of the power of self-confidence. The variety of people that I met, in vastly different situations, gave me way more perspective through their stories. With this, when it came time to make crucial life-altering decisions or for the sake of beating time, I was actually able to make more knowledged and assured decisions. I have to be honest that my social abilities, communication skills, and stress management (especially regarding time) have improved immensely in the 5 months spent in this course. These are things I KNOW that I can use in my day-to-day life.

So many different experiences contributed to fortifying my skills gain during this certification process. And these were experiences both in the classroom and in the field. 

In the classroom, we experienced lectures and labs that allowed us to learn basic-level medical skills in detail. Things such a CPR, airway control, oxygen tank setup, etc. were taught in a very individualized manner so that we could know everything before we had to pull it all together in our scenario lab testing. Because of the involvement, enthusiasm, and encouragement of my instructors for the class, this learning style proved to be in my favor. I knew that having these skills pat-down would take away a bit of the pressure when it came time to applying them and/or testing. 

In the field, we experienced hospital clinical shifts and fire station ambulance ride shifts which gave us experience in real-time with patients. While we were still under training, and our capabilities were limited, we got to visualize and experience the skills we learned in the classroom on real patients. Hospital shifts consisted of taking rounds, meeting checked in patients, and practicing asking our important patient assessment question that we learned. This helped us with meeting various people and developing a compassion/communication scale to know how to properly communicate with different patients. I got to see how the emergency department took in their patients and the helipad patient deploy on the rooftop! The patience, strength, and effort consistently provided by the hospital staff was definitely the highlight. Ambulance rides allowed us a little bit more to be hands-on with some patients. We could perform skills that we felt confident in: taking blood pressure, pulse, respiration, breath sounds, pulse-ox, setting up nasal cannulas, and other vital signs. Doing this in the classroom and actually on a patient are two entirely different battles. In class, you can keep practicing the skill on repeat while being able to make mistakes. In the field, you only really get one solid chance to take the right step. The ambulance rides definitely taught me resiliency and became a more intimate experience with patients. People are looking at you directly to make a decision on the course of their treatment. That kind of attention can definitely put some pressure, but in those moments, I felt in control know that the things I learned and tested on in class well would now come in handy… and they did. Being physically and emotionally tested can be draining and often times have you questioning if this is the right path for you. However, being present in these moments made me realize my true aptitude and become more confident that this pre-med path was right for me. 

Now, a lot of the experiences I had, I cannot truly share in the detail I would like to, that would make sense, showing the amazing nature of the medical world. This is because of the privacy rule under HIPAA. But I hope reading this gives you the emotional and passionate side of how I have changed. I want to detail one more life-changing, eureka! moment for me that made me realize that this is what I wanted to do. While dropping off a patient during my ambulance shift at the local mount caramel hospital, I got the chance to save someone’s life. I was asked to perform CPR on a patient going into cardiac arrest. When I was scouted amongst the onlookers by the head nurse in that hospital room, for the first time forgot all my fears, anxiety, and hesitation. When the patient regained their pulse, I stepped back with the biggest feeling of satisfaction that I had never felt before. Then I knew that this moment wouldn’t haunt me. Rather, it would resonate with me that I could do the things that I thought were not in my reach before. 

Overall this project truly was an eye-opening experience that has opened so many things up for me, not only career-wise but as a person too. It has taught me time management, discipline, ethics, control, and most importantly confidence. It assured me that the career path that I wanted to take was one that I could be most successful and passionate about. I took this class so that I could get myself more involved in the medical field while also pushing the boundaries that I was so very used to. And that goal was accomplished. Now I continue to work and learn to obtain my national license with the hope that this could land me work in the Ohio health system with more eye-opening experiences! 

In a world like ours today, where time is shifting, life is ever-changing, where we cannot expect things a certain way, I am forever grateful for the chances/moments like these; moments that teach us to flow with time and to learn every part of ourselves so we can reach our utmost potential.