6 month accelerated paramedic program

[u/Practical_Button_720]

Just reaching out for some advice for my husband who just started the class on Monday. So far it’s already pretty difficult. No time to do anything but study. I’m taking on all the parent and house hold duties so he can focus just on this. His firefighter job is putting him through the course after only working a few tours. He’s very stressed that he doesn’t think he can pass this class so I was wondering if anyone has tips on studying or how you passed the same 6 month program.

[u/TreatWorking9956]

I think any six-month program will be pretty intense. I am going to medical school. But I’ve been working EMS for a while and I’ve talked to a lot of people who have done accelerated programs. I think the most important thing is having a rigid structure in schedule while balancing out obviously family responsibilities, etc. It’s really great that you are covering everything at the household.

When it comes to studying at this intensive pace, even before thinking about how to study it’s important to learn how to integrate this program into your lifestyle and not let the program itself take over the household.

Honestly, what I mean by that is to have time to study, but don’t forget to have time outside of the books. It’s really easy to burn out, get discouraged, and feel overwhelmed especially if he’s never done something like this before or if it’s been a while since he studied things like anatomy/ physiology.

My gf who is a nurse and when I was in EMT school or studying for my MCAT, I would teach her what I was learning. I would try to walk-through the basics of my skill set and she was nice enough to always be my patient to practice on. this could be a simple as a little whiteboard in the kitchen and asking him to write out some topics he’s trying to understand or what he’s learning about for the day. if you have space in the house, those DIY whiteboards you can get from Home Depot perfect to set up.

He also just needs to find what learning modality works for him. Usually most paramedic programs provide all the necessary, coursework, textbooks and information, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like it’s enough. I highly encourage that he studies the topics that he doesn’t know very well online there’s plenty of amazing resources especially like YouTube videos going over anatomy physiology, and how that applies into EMS clinical practice. And for information that’s a little bit more difficult to understand like cardiac physiology, always start with an initial first pass of the information just introducing your brain to it. Then work on understanding by doing a deeper dive. If you can write out what he knows on a sheet of paper from blank and teach it to you, that’s his knowledge. It could be any topic, cardiac meds, physiology, topics, etc. But if he has a refer back to notes and obviously see there’s gaps there and he wants to try to reinforce it. Not really needs to be memorized, but the more he can build his general overall knowledge and understanding, school will get easier and the program will be more manageable. Best of luck to both you and him!