Ana Way

I never had a clear vision of what I wanted to do in life. Therefore, in high school my solution was to join a little bit of everything. I ended up joining my local junior ambulance program and ended up becoming a New York State Certified EMT. This was one of the most time dedicating things I ever did but it was also one of the most rewarding. It was a three-hour class, three times a week for 5 months; while also juggling my junior year of high school. The class included lots of tests that if you failed you get dropped from the class and you have to pay $150. The class itself wasn't too bad if you paid attention to it, but the tests were a lot of pressure on regular school. The class was so interesting with lots of information about how to help people during an emergency and certain life saving strategies. I learned CPR, how to bandage broken bones, stop severe bleeding and how to transport a patient properly. One of the best days was when we had skills day, we would practice all the skills needed such as conducting CPR and then giving Narcan or EPI. I loved the hands-on day because the lectures could bore me sometimes. My worst unit was special patient operations where certain skills that I memorized would be different due to the size, or condition of the patient; example if they were obese or pregnant. During the end of the course we had to get 10 hours of ride time in the ambulance doing hands-on work on real cases. Those were the scariest because they were real people with actual problems. One of my first cases I had to take blood sugar on an elderly patient and I was struggling because he was dehydrated and the blood wouldn’t come out of where I pricked his finger so one of the paramedics had to help me. Even though it was scary the paramedics were amazing and taught me lots of tricks with the easiest and most efficient way to get the job done. Getting ride time was one of the hardest things because where I am from there isn’t much that anyone is doing therefore not too many accidents or ambulances needed. I traveled to a town over and I would get there at 3 am to get my ride hours in and it was a very interesting experience. At the end I got my license and I later learned that I did not want to be in healthcare and went into college as an intended finance major. So, the moral to my story is try a little bit of everything because I don’t believe in bad experiences. I think they are learning experiences. Without doing that class I would never know what healthcare workers go through and it actually changed my perspective and made me more appreciative of what those people do for my community everyday and night.