Killing 6+ hours of my life I'll never get back to get my...46th and 47th bi-annual recertifications in bringing people back from the dead. Just in case I'd forgotten it since last week, when it was for real. Posting today may resume if I don't suffer Death By Powerpoint by early afternoon, local time.
This sort of mandatory nonsense should be a 30-minute online video game with UHD graphics, with a video made by John Cleese called How Not To Kill People, not a day-killing circle jerk doing it the same way it's been done since the 1980s. FFS. By 5 minutes into the pre-course assessment online, I was ready to hunt the test designer down, and strangle him with his own ripped out intestines. I may still do that, for extra credit.
Pre-tests where the information alleged to be correct is contradicted by the current course textbook in my hand, required for the course, FTW. Maybe if the people who designed the tests actually knew their own material, it would be a help to them.
Much like performing mayhem upon them for not being any such proficient would be a help to me.
Perhaps we can meet in the middle, and I could just beat them half to death.
This is going to be a looooooooong day...
LOL I HEAR you Aesop, same here at recert.
ReplyDeleteIn construction, they have an annual basic safety orientation certification that gives a badge to be presented before working in some industrial facilities. Added to this may be site specific courses required for admission to specific facilities. All require annual recertification, that involves sitting in front of a computer screen for hours watching the same videos watched the year before. After decades, most people could take the test, and be on their way in a few minutes, but that's not how they do things.
ReplyDeleteFailing to update the badge is the worst thing to do. That requires the complete orientation class, long hours watching the same long videos, and a day shot to hell.
The administrators/managers who design the tests and implement the testing requirements have not professionally come within arm's length of a warm body in a decade or two before they are vested with that authority to sign off on that male bovine fecal material.
ReplyDeleteWhen I worked at an Army hospital, when a code was called, a squad of Lieutenant Colonel RNs clutching their pathognomonic clipboards would creep out of the woodwork and crawl around asserting their authority while CPR was in progress by ordering a nursing technician to pick up a piece of gauze that had fallen from the patient's gurney to the floor, or in other similar ways. They should have had someone tell them "Don't just do something, stand there!"
I just did my own a few weeks ago. You'll appreciate this bit of nonsense, Aesop.
ReplyDeleteFor EMS initial and refresher, we are taught the classic 30-2 American Heart Association in a 4-hour block. That gets us our AHA card. Whoopee. Then, when we get out in the field, Kommiecticut EMS protocols are compression only for a single rescuer, and then one breath every 5-6 seconds with a BVM when there is a second rescuer with no pausing, after the AED is applied. If there are more EMS personnel we go with the "pit crew" approach. My agency is lucky to have a LUCAS device, so moving a patient means uninterrupted compressions. We go 20 minutes on scene, that's it. If there is any return of pulses, even temporarily, we transport. No ROSC, and we make the on-scene presumption while on the phone with medical control.
So its a case of "you passed, now forget what you just learned."
Do you need an advance airway in order to move from 30/2 to compression with ventilation?
DeleteThank God I literally destroyed my shoulder last year on a run. Permanently out of EMS after decades. No more retarded refreshers. No more retarded ABCDxyz course recerts. Freedom!
DeleteOur protocol says no 30-2. If the airway is patent the simple BVM is fine. At our level we can insert an oral or nasophryngeal adjunct. An on-scene paramedic can intubate if our efforts are not showing effective in chest rise or on the cardiac monitor for respiration or capnography.
DeleteI volunteered to drive a schoolbus for a Church. Even though I had the proper CDL, I had to go through the area school system training - every other year. 20 hours - two weekends, shot.
ReplyDeleteInto day 3, I turned to my friend (who was taking it as well) and said, this is retarded. All of this is part of the CDL test.
He said "You don't get it. It's not about the content. It's 20 hours. We'll have to do every minute". And so it was. And they called role in the morning, and after every break.
> Maybe if the people who designed the tests actually knew their own material, it would be a help to them.
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Harrumph! They probably farmed the test design out to a third party. You know, Real Professionals.
Someone took a quick look to see if it was the kind of Powerpoint-ish format they wanted, and nobody who had any actual qualifications was involved in the process, much less tasked to sit through the whole thing and make notes of any errata.
--TRX
Been in da sick people business since 1975. Been an orderly, basic EMT, Advanced EMT, RN, Midlevel. Been CPR instructor, Instructor Trainer, Affiliate Faculty (taught the instructor trainers).
ReplyDeleteEvery year, refresher course comes along. Again.
My comment, dad-joke-like, always is, "CPR? I always wanted to learn how to do that!"
I just finished my ACLS/BLS re-cert. I have no idea how many of these I have done over the decades.
ReplyDeleteMy facility gave up on the lucas. Doesn't fit your average fat American well and takes too much time messing around with it.
Since we are a teaching hospital we have a supply of young residents to do compressions. Last month a buxom blonde little hottie first year was on her knees on the bed pumping away. Afterwards us old fart ICU nurses commented that it was the "best code ever".
We are really good at setting up our LUCAS, and luckily haven't had a super-sized morbidly obese arrest since before we had it. The key is to start manual CCR immediately, and when opportunity presents, get the patient into the LUCAS. It takes only a second to pull down the piston, set the suction cup, and press the start button. Once its going it never tires.
DeleteThe old ACLS and the required Mega-Code, amiright?
ReplyDeleteUsed to strike fear into the paramedic students.
Once you have worked some real ones in the field it gets to be a real pain in the ass, just like you say.
At least in my recurrent every year we get to have engines turn into spinning and vibrating balls of fire at the worst possible time, in the most terrain challenged airports. After the first day "overcoming straight white male pilot bias" PowerPoint of course.
ReplyDeleteBeen in healthcare 45 years. Every year the "regulatory burden" i.e BULLSHIT I have to wade through has gotten deeper and deeper to the point where it has essentially DOUBLED the time it takes to accomplish pretty much any patient related task. The number of bean counting pencil necked idiots sitting on their constantly expanding collective asses has grown...almost exponentially. And every single one of those parasites has the mission AND authority to mandate actually useful employees to engage in some new bizarre, arcane and useless ode to managerial moronic mindlessness. It's reached the point now where in order to get my ONE PERCENT ANNUAL PAY RAISE I am REQUIRED to volunteer my personal time doing things like handing out water bottles at the farmers market or wrapping Xmas gifts for the local feral two legged parasites. And people wonder why the quality American healthcare is circling the drain.
ReplyDeleteDan: I wonder what your state labor department would say about "volunteer", unpaid, mandatory (as in adverse consequences for not playing) work?
ReplyDeleteOnce upon a time, my hospital refused to pay me my OT for an end-of-shift code.
In my state, the feds managed hospital wave/hour problems. The fed I spoke with did not equivocate. "Did you work the overtime?" (Yep) They will pay you. You might get disciplined for not following policy, but you *will* get paid!"
Shared that conversation with payroll, along with the observation that Channel (Whatever) News might be very interested in seeing any write up I might receive for working last my shift, in ER, on a code.
Oddly enough, I got my of, AND no write up!
Those who can, do.
ReplyDeleteThose who cannot, teach.
Even beauracratic parasites gotta have a paycheck to eat. Gotta justify their existence....
Well not medical but I just did my 20+ confined space training and recert....same crap, minor changes in the rules...all taught by people who couldn't even fit in a manhole....
ReplyDeleteI retired last year. The last month I was there, I had 8 hours of required workplace videos, all of which were ones that I had seen last year. I'm a forensic pathologist. I do (or did) autopsies for a living. The last year I worked, I did 386 autopsies, and I've been doing autopsies for 32 years.
ReplyDeleteBut, I still had to watch the two hours of instructional video on the dangers of bloodborne pathogens that I've seen every year since I started working there six years before.
@Anon 10:48,
ReplyDeleteJust about a month before I retire (hear me, God) I'm going to do a bloodborne pathogen video that will be hilarious, and still cover all relevant material to the letter, and probably get me thrown out of the business. Imagine, with "Holiday For Strings" playing in the background, the voiceover telling you to "properly clean and sterilize all contaminated material", and I start with a black guy in blood-spattered suit, and after a giant steam cloud, when the cloud of steam dissipates and he reappears he's a white guy in spotless white suit. Now imagine 10 more minutes or so of that level of non-p.c. nonsense, beginning to end. If that doesn't get me fired, nothing will.
Relney...they don't REQUIRE you to volunteer unpaid. You just don't get your annual pay adjustment if you don't meet a laundry list of things you have to do. And volunteering is on that list. Of course the facility can't seem to understand why they have a real problem keeping employees. Our HR head is evil....not stupid. They would NEVER violate the letter of the law. They have no problem stretching the hell out of it.
ReplyDeleteDifferent industry but mind numbing video training is in the works. Many mistakes and the worst is when the instruction is too vague on new products no one knows the details. Training says they just made the videos!! Ready to strangle people.
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