Day 2: Real World Prep

“The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.” - Dr. Seuss

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If there are two things that are good to know before entering the health care field it certainly is understanding the health care system and being able to apply basic life support skills in real world situations.

In our case Tier IV covers both of these! After tragically learning that my drivers license does not reflect my real weight at the Health Risk Assessment I joined my group at the medical school to begin our Basic Life Support (BLS) training.

Each year at MedEx we get re-certified but luckily for me I've never had to use any of these skills in the real world since the first time in Tier I. What I like about this course is that as unnerving as the mannequins look, we cover such a wide variety of scenarios that I would feel somewhat comfortable trying to help in case a real life emergency were to occur. This year's certification course was slightly different than previous years: we went a little more indepth into certain scenarios such as team BLS as wells as did a partner certification at the very end.

Overall I may not be prepared to ride with the EMTs but I do feel reassured knowing that I have this skills in my back pocket.

Claire and Davis making this look easy

In the afternoon the groups were switched and my BLS class relocated to a different room to work on our Affordable Care Act presentations. In Group 4 our project focuses on community strategies in different states that provide health care to the local population. There are so many different ones that I had never heard of before (such as the North Carolina Community Care program and the Oregon OCC model) but Im excited to see what we find during our research. The health care system is always a testy subject in the United States and sadly it seems as if it is due to the strong division in political party lines. There certainly won't be a permanent solution by the time my peers and I enter the health care field but all we can do is understand it now and hope for a more stable solution in the future.