Hospital Internships vs EMT vs Research

WayOutWestMom
Wed, 10 Nov 2010 09:55:55 +0000

RE: interning

My best advice is to intern with a doctor who knows you and who is in private practice and/or works at a private hospital. Public and federal hospitals (like the VA) have very strict patient privacy regulations that preclude interns from having much, if any contact with patients.

RE: EMT

First of all you must be 18 to take EMT training. And be 21 for EMT-P.

Caveat: EMT training and licensing varies a great deal by state. What is true for my state may not be true for yours. Check your state’s regulations. Also if you take your EMT training in your home state, your licensing may not be valid if you go out of state for college. Some states have reciprocity; many don’t.

EMT-B is a 12 or 15 week long course without significant clinical requirements. After you’ve finished the course with a satisfactory grade, you must take & pass a state licensing exam. EMT-B is a low level of training and will not in most cases make you employable. At least around here, hospitals will not allow volunteer EMT-Bs to have direct patient contact in the ER due to insurance and liability issues. And the fire dept will not take volunteers without at least 2 years of significant EMT experience and strongly prefer an EMT-I over an EMT-B. Most places around here that do take volunteers seem to expect volunteers to work regularly scheduled 4 hour shifts, at least 1 day a week. Search & rescue volunteers are on call 24/7 almost every day.

RE: research

It is almost always better to stick with a project long term than to flit from project to project. Researchers who take you into their lab will expect you to stay for at least a full year and strongly prefer longer. Why? Because you’re coming into their lab without any useful skills and it takes time to train you. Basically you’re their chore monkey at first. Newbies in the lab are often stuck with doing unskilled tasks for months until they’ve proven themselves by being meticulous in completing the tasks they’ve been assigned and by asking good, thoughtful, intelligent questions about what is taking place. Once you’ve earned their trust, only then will you start to get meaningful tasks and get real hands on participation in the actual data gathering. Research is a slow, careful and expensive process and the PI doesn’t want a newbie screwing stuff up that has may have taken months or years to do.

Science is a slow process. Research take years. Patience is important. And failure is always a possibility. However, sometimes even a failed experiment will yield important data.