Self Awareness – Page 2

Medic Up! Episode #6 – Shawn W. – 2017 Paramedic Graduate & Me

September 7, 2017 Chris R. Medic Up!

This week is the final week of the “Recent Paramedic Graduate” or whatever I’ve been calling it week-to-week series. I hope you’ve enjoyed listening to these guys and girls as they shared their experiences from medic school and their first few years in the career field.

Shawn stopped by the Medic Up! studios to talk about being a “Baby Medic” who actually has a paramedic card that he has to be careful with because the ink is still wet. This guy literally walked down the aisle to graduate 100 days prior to recording this episode.

This is probably one of my favorite episodes to date which is mostly due to the openness and sincerity that Shawn brought to the episode. I have no doubt that Shawn is going to get a lot out of his career choice because it is evident how much he is willing t put into it. If you’re a student going through school I am sure you can relate to much of what Shawn talks about.

Thank you, guys, for listening. We passed 1,000 downloads this past week which is 999 more than I thought that I’d ever get. If you keep listening, I’ll keep creating.

I am always open to suggestions as to what or who you want to hear. Contact Medic Up! by leaving a comment or messaging us on Facebook by searching for @Medic.Up.Podcast.

-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 #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

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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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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.