I'm a reserve flight medic. When I'm not cosplaying as a soldier, I'm a civilian ER nurse for my day job. It pays the fucking bills and I'm actually quite good at it.
But in the Army, because it's a stupid institution with stupid rules, I'm an E6. If I'd leave aviation (which I love), I'd be an O3. But because I don't make that choice, no one listens to me.
I went through through the UTSAHSCA course with Leslie and Michelle (we all know who was worth listening to) after I'd been an ER nurse for 4 years. I only went to the UTSAHSCA course because I used my GI Bill to put myself through a fucking BSN program and I didn't have enough left to put myself through a paramedic program near my home. So I went to San Antonio for a year.
I know Emergency Medicine. I work in one of the largest cities in the United States as an ER nurse.
The program that the US Army put me through to become a flight medic was world class.
I learned shit in that program that I hadn't picked up in nursing school or my years working as an ER nurse.
Once I graduated though.. there's no follow through.
In typical Army fashion, they make people achieve a "Civilian Certification" and don't bother trying to maintain that skillset.
I'm currently activated on some bullshit AD installation and our 1SG is a fucking over-glorified CNA 68W with no critical care experience. This idiot truly has no idea how poorly he is educating and sustaining his medics, and he doesn't fucking care as long as the grass gets mowed.
This idiot is going to directly get soldiers killed in the next 5-10 years because of his inability to understand what FP-C medics are supposed to know and he's too fucking stupid to even comprehend it. It would be funny if it weren't so tragic. Literally Cotton Hill laughing about his time in "the war", while actual medically literate subordinates are asking for qualified training.
When my reserve unit got here, we did a medical skills survey.
60+% of the AD Flight medics didn't know how to pace a patient.
THEY DIDN'T KNOW HOW TO PACE A PATIENT
They didn't know how to administer levophed, they didn't know how to administer metoprolol, they didn't know how to administer ketamine (they couldn't articulate between an analgesic vs. sedative/PAI dose), they didn't know how or why to administer mag sulfate.... SE/SA/pre-/-eclampsia/etc...
They don't know because no one develops them. There's no "new grad / proctor" program for them.
They fucking graduate and as far as the Army is concerned, they're fucking done until they retire... and no one in medevac understands how many people this will kill because they're all fucking pilots and asshole 1SG ground medics who don't know their asshole from a propofol bolus and why that might be dangerous.
It's a fucking shit show out here.
I'm glad I'm not AD anymore, because you idiots are fucked if you think medevac is still staffed by SSG Spraktes and his crews.
It's fucking not.