Fourth year athletic training student Kinsey Cook did an ambulance ride-along with the Mercy ambulance crew last week as part of her interprofessional experience hours. As part of the clinical practicum courses, all 2nd-4th year AT students are required to obtain a minimum of 16 hours per term in an interprofessional experience. Often these experiences are very valuable as students are able to see how health care professionals work as part of a team and also get to experience things that they may not have as part of their regular clinical rotations. Below is Kinsey’s reflection of the experience which included preforming CPR on an actual victim for the first time.
“I had the opportunity to get some interprofessional experience hours with a Mercy ambulance crew and ended up participating in a code call and performed CPR on a patient on scene. While it was a difficult experience as the patient did not survive, it was also an invaluable one. I performed CPR on a human, which like everyone says, is completely different than practicing on a dummy. I was involved in bagging of the patient as well. After performing CPR for over 45 minutes the decision was made to stop and the time of death was announced. Afterwards the two paramedics and I sat in the ambulance and discussed what happened and I was told they were impressed with how I handled the situation and without having EMT training, I performed better than a lot of current EMTs do in that situation. I was very appreciative for the compliment and think that is a huge testament to the training the AT program provides for us as athletic training students. They comment on how I stepped in without hesitation and continued CPR, which is more than can be said for the majority of the EMT students they train on the ambulance. Training really does take over in those situations and I am thankful for the training the department has provided. The family thanked all of us individually after the patient was pronounced dead and told us how much they appreciated us doing all we could to save their loved one.” – Kinsey Cook
Thank you for sharing your experience, Kinsey.