self assessment – Page 2

Medic Up! Podcast Episode #5 – Kirstin (Not Kristen) 2012 Paramedic Graduate

August 31, 2017 Chris R. Medic Up!

Kirstin (not Kristen) is the EMS Veteran of the group having just completed her 5th year in EMS practice. She sits down to share some insights of being a very young student paramedic with very little life experience, progressing through paramedic school and being a new medic in a busy system. She started EMT school, taking the “Zero – to – Hero” route right out of high school and becoming a medic at 20 years old; effectively putting her in a position where she can administer narcotics but not buy a drink at the bar!

We talk about mentors, waiting 5 years to cardiovert a patient in the field, goal setting to progress though an EMS career and that stomach butterfly / flip-flop thing when the tones drop.

If you’ve been listening to the series I think you can easily draw parallels between each of these “new” medics who shared similar experiences coming up in EMS. I think you can hear the difference between the 2 year medic vs the 5 year medic. In the next and final episode in the “Recent Paramedic Graduate” series we will hear from a brand – spanking – new paramedic in the middle of his survival year. He’s straight forward and honest about his journey and I know you guys will dig it. Stick around!

-Chris

DISCLAIMER:
The views and opinions expressed on the Medic Up! Podcast are those of the individual host and guest (s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the host’s or guest’s employer(s). Any content provided by our guests are of their opinion, and are not intended to malign any religion, ethic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything anywhere. The Medic Up! Podcast is not responsible for the accuracy of any information contained in the podcast series available for listening or reading on this site. The primary purpose of this podcast series is to educate, inform and entertain. This podcast series does not constitute other professional advice or services.

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Medic Up! Podcast Episode 4: O.B. – 2015 Paramedic Graduate & Me

August 23, 2017 Chris R. Medic Up!

Welcome back boys and girls to the Medic Up! podcast. This week continues with the 3rd installment where I sit down with some of my former students who are now practicing paramedics to get their thoughts on making the transition from paramedic student to prehospital clinician.

O.B. stopped by this week to hang out for close to an hour. He’s a 2015 graduate but he just recently got his NRP certification. O.B. is the picture of persistence! He didn’t give up, he put in the work and he earned that disco patch statistically beating the odds and I couldn’t be more proud of this dude!

Thank you to everyone who has listened, downloaded, liked, shared, reviewed and sent me texts and PM’s. This thing is taking off way faster than I could have imagined. Subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music. Search for Medic Up! on your favorite podcast app.

One, maybe two more weeks of former paramedic students and then we’re going to switch gears and hit some fun topics with some really awesome people. Stick around!

Thanks for listening.

-Chris

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Medic Up! Episode 2: Rita F. – 2014 Paramedic Graduate & Me

August 9, 2017 Chris R. Medic Up!

Episode 2

I have finally gotten around to getting the podcast going. It’s still a little rough around the edges but I am learning.

Episode 2 starts a series of interviews with 5 “recent” paramedic school graduates. I think that most students have similar experiences during school that bring them together as a class/cohort. The real learning begins after they graduate and begin to work in the career field. I lovingly refer to the first year of paramedic practice as: “The Survival Year.” After The Survival Year, the paramedic starts to develop into their own clinician; figuring out what works, what doesn’t and how they like to do things.

In this episode we’ll here from Rita F. who has a fantastic story of oppurtunity, overcoming adversity and the realization of her dream.

**These episodes are largely unedited and the guests were not given the questions in advance as to illicit more spontaneous visceral responses.

I think most medic students and practicing paramedics can relate to most

everything my guests talk about.

I hope you dig it.

-Chris

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Responder Solutions Group Receives Recognized Educational Content Approval from the Committee for Tactical Emergency Casualty Care

July 8, 2017 Chris R. Blog post

Responder Solutions Group was recently approved as a Recognized Educational Content provider by the Committee for Tactical Emergency Casualty Care. This means that RSG pledges to abide by the Committee for Tactical Emergency Care Principles of Guidelines Instruction.

from the C-TECC Principles of Guidelines Instruction:

As an educational entity that is recognized to be in accordance with the C-TECC Principles of Guidelines Instruction by the Committee for Tactical Emergency Casualty Care, we agree to:

1. Provide instructors that are qualified to instruct the Guidelines to the appropriate scope of practice and approved medical protocols of the student.

2. Provide TECC instructors and consulting personnel that are accurate, current and up-to-date with the Guidelines.

3. Instruct the education of the Guidelines without altering the inherent procedure, intent or purpose.

4. Instruct the operational application of the Guidelines without altering the inherent procedure, intent or purpose.

5. Allow for student feedback and incorporate that back into future courses as appropriate

6. No misrepresentation of the intent or proper application of the Guidelines in any way.

7. No attribution of the Committee’s approval or endorsement in any way to any specific product or company.

The Committee for Tactical Emergency Casualty Care does not endorse any training organization or program, but will recognize those educational partners who agree to utilize the guidelines, as written, without change to the language, scope, or intent contained within

Responder Solutions Group looks forward to presenting this lifesaving information and accompanying skills in accordance with the Principles of Guidelines Instruction set by the

Committee for Tactical Emergency Casualty Care.

Become a Top Performer: Beating the Dunning-Kruger Effect

May 28, 2017 Chris R. Blog post

Do you know what you don’t know? Do you even care? Well, if you don’t care about improving your personal performance then you are doomed to be stuck in mediocrity and that’s not O.K. because it means you’re part of the problem.

David Dunning and Justin Kruger described a cognitive bias in which people who performed at the lowest level of a task overestimated their own ability at the task. In other words: self professed experts at something are often underperforming the skill in which they profess to be an “expert.” Why is this? Simply, they don’t know what they don’t know. They suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their ability as greater then it actually is. Illusory superiority is a product of the person’s inability to recognize their own ineptitude. Without self-awareness, low-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their actual competence or incompetence.^[1]

The opposite of this is also true. High performing individuals underestimate their own ability and don’t understand why others struggle with skills that they themselves find easy to perform. In other words: If a task is easy for them to perform it should be just as easy for someone else to successfully perform. Obviously, this is not always the case since people learn differently and reach competency at different times.

Self assessment is the key to beating the Dunning-Kruger effect. Being able to have that HONEST internal self talk with yourself about performance is essential to develop as a professional and perform to your fullest potential. This is obviously very important if you work in a high reliability organization like healthcare, the airline industry or any other job that requires you to perform at your peak. This also easily relatable to everyday life. If you don’t want to the best person, parent, husband, wife you can be then you probably don’t like or know how to self assess.

Self assessment is also know as reflection. If you take 5 minutes after a task to evaluate a few things, you are on the road to performance improvement and development of your self as a top performing individual. Some people keep a reflective journal, others record their self assessments via digital voice recorder or their smart phone. Athletes use video to assess performance. The video doesn’t lie no matter how much they rationalize. The next time you perform a task such as starting an IV, placing and endotracheal tube, splinting a refract or just driving to work try this simple reflective debrief:

What went well?
What didn’t go so well?
What needs improvement
4. What can I do in the future to prevent things that happend when I answered #2?

The person who is constantly willing to self assess in all aspects of their life is the person who will continue to develop as a person and achieve peak performance Whether they are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company responsible for a multi-million dollar budget or a teacher responsible for 25 3rd graders, self reflection and self assessment pays dividends. You just have to be honest with yourself even when you don’t like hearing what you’re telling yourself.