Exciting Paramedic Essay to Read!

[crawl731]

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

 

Working as a paramedic for eleven years has taught me so much. The day that I knew I could handle anything was early in my career. It was late at night and we were responding to a car accident on a highway. We heard there were three vehicles involved including a semi rollover. When we arrived I immediately took over and consulted with the medic that had started triage. He walked me to an overturned car that had a teenage girl pinned underneath. Another medic on the scene had determined that there were potentially critical patients in the other vehicles. I found the girl lying on her back in a pool of gas with the roof of the car on her chest. I could tell that she was unresponsive and breathing inadequately. I asked a firefighter if they could get the car off of the girl in the next five minutes. He told me that they could not. At that point, I could tell that she was no longer breathing. I made the decision to pronounce her dead and move on to the other patients. It was not an easy decision but I knew it was the correct one.

 

I feel I have developed as a professional throughout my career through experiences such as this and my extensive training and education. I've always considered myself a good paramedic and tried to be a leader in my field. This prompted me to start training new paramedics. This evolved into running the education department for my ambulance service. I managed a small team in charge of training and evaluating our 120 paramedics. We also provided training for other EMS services, fire departments, police departments and the public. I took pride in this role and tried to provide the highest quality training possible. I wanted my coworkers and partners to feel they are being supported in their desire to improve as professionals. No matter what I am doing with my life I try to do it to the best of my abilities. My coworkers would say that not only do I work with purpose but I do it for the right reasons. My intent is to help my colleagues but also to improve care that our patients receive.

 

This desire to improve has led me to want to become a physician assistant. I decided that I should go back to school for management when I first started training paramedics. I quickly realized that I missed working with patients. I missed the clinical care and the personal interactions with patients and their families. A friend of mine at the time was working towards becoming a PA. We talked a lot about the field, what the work was like, the future of the industry and what a great PA does to be successful. It did not take long for me to realize that this is what I wanted to do. I researched other fields including nursing and medical school to ensure that I was making the correct decision. I wanted more responsibility in the care of the patient than I had as a paramedic. I felt nursing was too much of a lateral transfer. I also determined that medical school was not a good decision for me because I did not like the idea of specializing in one field. The PA field was perfect for my situation. It allows for changes in specialty, high level of responsibility, high job satisfaction, and there is growth in the field with a bright future for the industry.

 

That summer I decided that this was my new path. I switched my major to biology and started working towards becoming a PA. I loved my biology, chemistry and psychology courses. I was able to take what I learned in class and apply it as a paramedic and in my education position. I found myself teaching things at work that I had just learned in class. I met many other pre-PA students, current PA students and actual PA's along the way. They have all strengthened my opinion of the field and my desire to become a PA.

 

Situations such as the car accident have taught me to be decisive but to also reflect afterwards to make sure that I perform better in the future. This drive to improve helped me decide that I wanted to become a PA. I enjoy my career as a paramedic but I want to learn more about medicine and I want to be able to help more people. I love to learn and what I like about becoming a PA is that I will have the opportunity to continuously improve throughout my career. If I ever want to challenge myself all I have to do is switch fields and I will be learning something completely new. I plan on working in primary care and emergency. The thought of forming relationships with my patients is exciting. I believe I will be an excellent PA that will contribute to the professionalism of the industry.

 

A friend of mine that I respect greatly told me about this quote when we were discussing my career goals.

 

"Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect." Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

I've worked hard to get to this point in my life with a singular goal of becoming an excellent PA. I will continue to work hard in school and throughout my career as a physician assistant.

[EMEDPA]

I like it(especially the 3rd paragraph) but would do something to this one line

" The day that I knew I could handle anything was early in my career.".

as a former medic I understand what you are getting at. been there, down that. if an adcom member reading this had no ems background they would say "cocky bastard has paragod syndrome".

maybe the day I knew I could handle tough decisions or difficult challenges or some wording like that. just get rid of the word anything. if you can handle "anything" already you don't need to go to pa school. see what I'm getting at?

Emedpa

former L.A. and philadelphia medic.

[crawl731]

You know I was kind of thinking the same thing. Its hard to balance confidence and cockiness through writing. Thank you for the advice and reading it.

 

Brian