beating myself up

[lynard]

Ive been an emt-basic for appr 6 months in a very rural area so we dont get a lot of calls in general. Today was my first real trauma and my brain completely left my head. Thank God there were plenty of other emts and medics around to cover my butt. Im so upset with myself...Im now right back to where i started with NO confidence and i feel like a complete fool around my medics. They were great and they were very understanding but im still beating myself up.

When i got home today after the call i was just so exhausted and really stressed out.

I know thats all probably normal for rookies but im really freaked out about it and worried that im not going to be able to do this.

[medic001918]

Don't beat yourself up over it. There were other people there to help you out. That's part of the reason we work in teams. Remember you're fairly new to the field and don't have a great deal of experience. No matter what, you're not going to know what to do in every situation. The more calls you run the more comfortable you become with different scenarios. Talk to your peers that you work with you and your medics to find out what you could have done differently. I'm sure they'll be more than happy to help you out and talk to you. Most of all, instead of beating yourself up; take something from the experience and learn from it. Remember, as a new EMT you only have a small foundation of which you are building upon. After some years of doing this, you'll have a larger foundation and a bigger house of knowledge. Go forth and learn.

Shane

NREMT-P

[Ridryder 911]

Welcome to EMS... you learned something. Now review and remember not to do the same bad things...

Good luck,

R/R 911

[nsmedic393]

Every medic makes mistakes. The good ones are the people who can take a mistake or bad experience, learn from it and apply it to better themselves down the road.

[buckeyedoc]

Welcome to EMS... you learned something. Now review and remember not to do the same bad things...

Good luck,

R/R 911

I have to agree. You should take a little something from every call. Learn from your mistakes (and others' mistakes). That is how we become good at what we do.

[itku2er]

When i got home today after the call i was just so exhausted and really stressed out. I know thats all probably normal for rookies but im really freaked out about it and worried that im not going to be able to do this.

LYNARD....

A lesson learned is a lesson kept. You can handle anything you set your head to, you are only limited by what you dont allow yourself to do..expirence is the best teacher .....if you need to review what you did or didnt do just ask any of us here we are for the most part nonjudgmental and we will do our best to help you....i am just a pm away if you need me..... so here is my advice to you...

CHIN UP....

NOW SMILE :nike: (see that wasnt so hard now was it?)

CAUSE NO ONE IS PERFECT REGUARDLESS OF WHAT THEY TELL YA......

Terri :angel12:

[Shansist]

Lynard, Don't beat yourself up. I was in exactly the same position as you not so long ago. On Xmas eve as a matter of fact. We had a pretty bad MVA right in front of our building that I heard from the couch. I ran outside to see what it was and right back inside to get my partner. I heard a FD member who saw me run outside calling for 10.18 traffic. I called into central and told them we were en route before they even paged us out. U/A there was a man all bent out of shape from the drivers seat to the rear seat and barely alive. The medic that was on with me immediately jumped in the back seat to take C-spine as I ran to the truck for a collar. Brought back the collar and put it on and held a sheet over them as the FD cut the car away. He stopped breathing and she yelled at me for a BVM which she called something else I had never heard of before. I had the ALS bag in front of me and I started to open it when she said get the basic bag. With that already confusing to me as I had no idea what she wanted but assumed it was a BVM, I ran to the truck to get the basic bag. Then she hollared for suction. My mind went completely blank and I couldnt remember if the suction unit on the wall would work when unplugged or not. I tried it and it did, then I couldn't find the Yaunker. I was stressed. I just had to stop, breathe and regroup. At that point a volunteer showed up on scene and assessed the two people in the other vehicle that I completely blocked out as they were CAOx3 and sitting on the church steps. Anyway, I had some friends and co-workers throughout the county that heard me on the radio giving rundowns of pts. to the closest available medic unit for assistance and I took ems scene command. That part I got compliments up the ying yang for. The point I am trying to make is that sometimes you are better at one part of the call than you are at others. EVERYONE is. EVERYONE blanks out from time to time, and EVERYONE questions and critiques themselves after a bad call. Or at least they SHOULD! I don't care who you are or what your status is, there will always be room for improvement. Don't let it stop you, keep trucking and regroup. I came back off that call in tears and called my best friend and told him I felt like a failure. He reassured me I was not and that it happens to the best of us. That's what we are here for, to help each other and lean on one another. When you start screwing up on every call is when you should think about going back through the class or getting into a refresher and brushing up.

[Guest]

Don't sweat it too much. Learn from it like others have posted. We were all rookies at some point.

Stay safe.

[ALERT Medic]

We all second guess ourselves at some point in our careers. Some more than others. My medical director put it pretty simply to me...if you don't second guess yourself then you probably don't care about the patient or your job.

My point, like others, don't sweat it. I still second guess my actions sometimes. It's human nature. You may have done just fine as far as others were concerned but your own self evaluation of the call will always be more critical than others.

As ems professionals, we are our own worst enemies. Learn from what happened and move on.

Take care.

[lynard]

Thanks for all the encouragement,It really helped. I was so stressed after that call that i slept nearly all weekend. I have visited with some of my co workers about it and they all say the same as i have seen here.

I am feeling better about the whole thing now (a tiny bit..lol)

And i definitely wont make the same mistake again...which by the way was I forgot how to put the c-collar together...i just drew a complete blank and after that i couldn't remember my name..lol

:oops: