EMT Day 1 and 2

I officially am now an employed EMT-B (basic life support) in NYC. I'm with a service (ambulance companies are called services) that luckily does participate in emergency calls and not just transport. A supervisor that spoke to us yesterday very much emphasized the emergency side of documentation, but I'm not sure that's because we will get a lot of those calls or because that makes the most money. Documentation was pounded into our heads yesterday, no doubt for reimbursement purposes. That's fine though, if the service doesn't get paid, we can't get paid.

Most of the last couple days has been paperwork, along with a touch of disorganization. However, we had to do a "FIT" test, which means we have a hood placed over our heads while an instructor sprays "poisonous gas" into it and makes sure we can taste it initially, and then can't after we put on a portable respirator. We also had some "for-the-street" CPR training by a medic. This essentially just means learning to do things quickly, as well as apply defibrillation pads almost immediately to someone in cardiac arrest. We didn't get to go on a bus (ambulance) yet, hopefully within the next day or so. Maybe I'll have some interesting stories after that.