Becoming an EMT during nursing school, for experience?

I'm an Advanced EMT. As I see it, there are pros and cons. I work with a few doctors who were paramedics while they were getting their MD. You can totally tell in the way they interact with us. Same too with the nurses who are/were EMTs and paramedics. IMHO, they're better providers for having had that experience.

A lot of nursing programs don't teach you certain techniques -- IV starts is one that comes to mind. As a Basic EMT, IVs would be outside your scope of practice, but if you do get your Advanced (another 150-200 hours), then you'll not only know how to start an IV, you'll eventually learn to get them in such choice places like "wedged in between the tub and toilet at 2am" and "arm dangling out of the mashed-up car in a ditch, in the rain" and "in the back of a moving ambulance over a pothole riddled road while dodging traffic." So that's something to think about. The nurses I know who've done some time in an ambulance can get blood out of a stone -- that hemodynamically unstable patient who's 98 pounds and had diabetes for the last 56 years is child's play.

If you're gunning for ER nursing, I'd totally get your EMT, if for no other reason than to get a sense of what we see. When we bring in someone from the street, having that perspective can help with visualizing mechanism of injury, or even having a sense of what some old lady's house looks like when she's totally falling down on her ADLs.

The cons are probably obvious -- money, time, distraction. It's also going to depend on what kind of EMT work you'll be able to find. If you're on an IFT (interfacility transfer) truck, doing nothing but dialysis transfers, you won't see much of the 911 end of things. But then again, if you're going to be on a floor for any length of time, having an understanding of how IFT works can help you head off scheduling problems at the pass, and that'll make your job (and the jobs of those around you) much easier. There are companies that have city contracts that require all advanced/paramedic crews for 911 calls, and there are contracts that allow basic EMTs to run 911. It all depends on the municipality. (And most volunteer ambulance services are glad to put basics on 911 calls.)

For me, any knowledge that helps you know how other elements of healthcare work is never wasted knowledge.

/r/StudentNurse Thread