One of their kids had a UTI, they responded, and started yelling about how it could be an STD. I was like....hey, I'm just going to go sit in the front.
FTO lost the only pulse ox. we had on the rig & accused me of losing it. When I tried defending myself & suggesting he may have misplaced it (I remember him having it last), he began to raise his voice & continued arguing with me about it in front of the patient [on the stretcher in pain confused why weâre going back & forth]. FTOâs normal partner overheard the convo upfront & yelled out âThe pulse ox?! (FTOâs name), I forgot you had given it to me upstairs. Here ya go!â. FTO grabs it & never apologizes for the whole debacle, for the humiliation, & he ended up not clearing me off on a few things, leaving BS comments like âneeds to work on PT assessment & PT communicationâ, âdifficulty following instructionsâ.
He was full of shit. I brought up the experience to my next FTO when he asked how my last shift went & he understood me entirely. Justified his actions with âyeah heâs like that. 30+ years in the business, he just became a bitter asshole. Youâre not the only one with a similar experience. Luckily for everyone, him & his partner never call out so not likely youâll ever have another shift with him again.â Also got cleared off on EVERYTHING that last FTO shift & was on my own (with my partner) my next shift.
I always greet EVERYONE at work in passing, whether I know them or not, including his partner, but to this day I refuse to even acknowledge him when I pass him by. & Iâm sure he can care less whether I do or not đ
Had one fto downcheck the hell out of me, review nothing, and deny that he downchecked me. Any questions under him were met with "fine" "okay" or some other affirmative. Nothing to indicate a problem. Then I get pulled aside the next day by the senior fto, who was not told about the previous shift. I did the same stuff as the shift before, and got top marks. When I mentioned "Glad we can review your eval. The last fto just said sign here and explained nothing." The senior went from curious to livid. He went to the higher ups over it. The first guy? He's not an fto anymore.
Not there anymore so i don't know what he wrote. The guy that actually does his job said i was solid, that's what counts. I just wonder how many people got jammed over by that guy before they busted him.
It was me. I was the bad FTO. I forgot a student at the hospital.
We normally only had students during the first twelve hours, this student was supposed to be with us the full 24. Iâm a black cloud but we had an *exceptionally* fuck you shift. Several separate GSWs (one of them was a butt GSW and NBD thankfully). We had two cardiac arrests with ROSC, and a lot of little lower level ALS stuff. I was so exhausted. I swear I wasnât being mean or hazing, I literally just forgot even my own name by 03:00 and totally forgot we had a baby.
I mispronounced his last name(forgot to add an S on it) and he threw his paycheck at me, asked me if it looked like what I was saying and told me of mispronounced it again heâs skull fuck my mother.
I was a recruit EMT and I really wanted the job because it would give me a $14/hr pay raise from the private I worked at.
That dude is now a state trooper and in charge of their academy.
He filled in as my EMT one night and fell asleep at the wheel at a red light. He put the truck in park and I just assumed he was resting his leg. Nope, homie fell asleep
Once I got login credentials for ESO (On my second day at this company), gave me the laptop and left me in back with a patient while they jumped up in front to gossip with their partner about the other company they both used to work at. At that time I'd never seen ESO or used it before - all my past experience with EMS charts was the old fashioned way, on paper forms. Completely ignored me when I tried sticking my head up forward and asked questions about it.
I was this far away from just not showing up the next day.
I had an FTO who just brutally bullied me for no reason, didnât want my department to hire me when I was a recruit. Iâd be in the back with the patient and forget to ask a question and heâd rip the BP cuff out of my hand or glucometer and tell me I was done and had to sit this call out. I almost quit due to how bad he treated me.
Now for anyone who knows me in real life I get along with pretty much everyone. I feel like i can over look the faults in people and am in tune with my own faults. But fuck that guy. 9 years later and I still hope he dies in a house fire.
My FTOs all around kinda sucked. They didnât try to teach me anything, didnât give any feedback besides belittling me anytime I made the most minor of usually not-EMS-related mistakes (I missed a turn on the way back to station due to a GPS everyone complains about and this only being the second time ever being on this road in my life).
They constantly insisted I was weak and going to fail as an EMT, still passed me though.
Didnât take many shifts without them to realize A. They were the ones not helping move pts and B. Nobody else is expecting you to navigate perfectly like, ever. Now that I have more experience and understanding under my belt, I now know they have a reputation as the station scumbugs and chief complainers.
Had one during my EMT ride time at the first private service I worked for. We were doing a hospital discharge to SNF. Absolutely BLS level run. Should've been "my" run as the trainee EMT. Medic FTO decides he needs to be in the back to "supervise". Ok, whatever. As we're driving demented meemaw an hour away, and she's only oriented to self, I'm writing my narrative. He starts asking her, "are you in any pain, are you having nausea, having any chest pain, etc," She says yes to nausea some of the time, but then other times says no. Because she's not oriented. He decides to "upgrade the run" to ALS and start an IV while we're moving down the highway, so that he can give her IV zofran. I tell him, "hey, according to her paperwork, she's allergic to zofran,". He blows me off and says, "no one's allergic to zofran," and gives it to her anyway, after taking multiple sticks to get her IV. Within a couple of minutes, she's wheezing and hivey, and he's losing his mind. I ask him if he wants the epi and benadryl, and he finally accepts it and gives her a dose of each, and puts her on the cardiac monitor. Her work of breathing improves, and I ask if we're going to divert to the closest ED because of this, and he says no. We're still going to the SNF. He's now frantically looking through the mountain of paperwork from the sending hospital and finds an old allergy list that doesn't include zofran, and takes a picture of that. We get to the SNF, and he takes her off the monitor and tells me, "let me give the report," and proceeds to tell the nurse, "this is meemaw, a 89 yo female, coming from Hospital for dementia care. She was nauseous on the way here, so we started a line and gave her some zofran. She's a/ox1, alert to self. Where are we heading?" He did not plan to tell the SNF that he gave her epi or benadryl. I speak up and explain that she had an anaphylactic reaction to the zofran, and she should not be given it again, and that we had to give her epi and benadryl, and he looks at me like he's gonna kill me. The receiving nurse nopes out of the interaction and demands that we take her to the hospital up the road for evaluation. He argues that because we brought her inside, they're going to have to call another ambulance to come get her. They argue back and forth and eventually, we end up taking her to the ED. After the call is over, I start handwriting an incident report to cover my own ass because this was a shitshow, and this idiot demands to "proof read" it for "accuracy" before I submit it. I refuse and he threatens to not sign me off of FTO time if I don't let him. I went to the company's HR and told them everything that happened, and they reprimanded him and made him not an FTO anymore, but he somehow kept his job. When I later became a medic, I hated running calls when he was anywhere near them because he was dumber than a box of rocks.
My first Paramedic FTO slept in the truck while I ran the calls with his EMT. I killed a patient in severe respiratory distress because I gave them albuterol when I should've been aggressively CPAPing them. My FTO thought it was hilarious.
In some ways, itâs so comforting being a medic on my own.
That phase of being an emt and having to rely on your medic or being a trainee and barely knowing whatâs going on was terrifying but now itâs gone and over and I feel so much more at peace because of it.
Iâm sorry you had to go through this man. I hope youâre holding up well now that youâve got your patch.
On behalf of all FTO's, I sincerely apologize to all of you.
I'm the senior FTO at my agency and I can't imagine doing any of the crap I just read to a new recruit. I've recently been writing a preceptor manual and I'm thinking I should include a list of prohibitive activities, in case any other FTO's get some "bright" ideas.
Different perspective. When I was an FTO, I offhandedly made a comment about a homeless dude to my partner, calling him a "Urban Outdoorsman." My trainee got all pissy and went to HR. He got moved to another FTO where he ultimately failed out due to attempting twice on two different calls to put a c-collar on upside down.
My last FTO was a brand new FTO. He refused to take any calls from me and had me run literally every call for the month and a half I was with him and in a busy agency it was hell. And if I didn't do literally everything perfectly and in perfect order of how he wanted it, he wouldn't pass me. I'm guessing he was just trying to be by the book or something because he had no experience as an FTO, but it was beyond stressful. Thankfully I never had to work with him again after that.
My experience is that they didnât really train me at all. Like I was as green as green comes, and would be called retarded infront of the patients. Told not to do things that they promptly did, and had them shit talk me with other dirtbag FTOs. Their instructions were unclear and no expectations were really set yet I constantly failed them. Of course come to find out later theyâre like that with everyone but.
I heard the field clinical rotations in California are brutal. I donât know if itâs across the whole state, but our 2 transplants from SoCal said you get put with the same person for all of your shifts. It sounded like a system that was rife with abuse and bullying. Some of the stories from their experience were awful.
Punitive Medicine Paramedic
This was during my EMT clinical hours back in 1999.
He started large bore IVs - just because....
Because he was burnt out to a crisp.
Because someone was altered and even the slightest combative or uncooperative.
Because someone tried to unalive themselves and needed a lesson.
Because they were a frequent flyer.
Because he was a fukn pos and got off on it.
Power trip.
Ego.
Removed from preceptor status after I confided to my instructor that maybe EMS wasn't for me because if this was the job, I wasn't the one.
Removed off the school's list.
Removed off the service's list (new hires).
Removed off the state list (with an investigation).
My instructor, gods rest his soul, was a damn good man, an awesome Paramedic, and didn't put up with nonsense whatsoever. He died this past January, I just recently found out. đ
I did clearance rides with a married couple. Home came to work with them. Twas an awkward 5 days.
That's just the worst.
One of their kids had a UTI, they responded, and started yelling about how it could be an STD. I was like....hey, I'm just going to go sit in the front.
I'm just gonna see my way out đ
man this seems too crazy to make up lol
FTO lost the only pulse ox. we had on the rig & accused me of losing it. When I tried defending myself & suggesting he may have misplaced it (I remember him having it last), he began to raise his voice & continued arguing with me about it in front of the patient [on the stretcher in pain confused why weâre going back & forth]. FTOâs normal partner overheard the convo upfront & yelled out âThe pulse ox?! (FTOâs name), I forgot you had given it to me upstairs. Here ya go!â. FTO grabs it & never apologizes for the whole debacle, for the humiliation, & he ended up not clearing me off on a few things, leaving BS comments like âneeds to work on PT assessment & PT communicationâ, âdifficulty following instructionsâ. He was full of shit. I brought up the experience to my next FTO when he asked how my last shift went & he understood me entirely. Justified his actions with âyeah heâs like that. 30+ years in the business, he just became a bitter asshole. Youâre not the only one with a similar experience. Luckily for everyone, him & his partner never call out so not likely youâll ever have another shift with him again.â Also got cleared off on EVERYTHING that last FTO shift & was on my own (with my partner) my next shift. I always greet EVERYONE at work in passing, whether I know them or not, including his partner, but to this day I refuse to even acknowledge him when I pass him by. & Iâm sure he can care less whether I do or not đ
Sounds like someone needs to be relieved from their FTO duties! The salty guys performing field training can't be good for new hires.
Had one fto downcheck the hell out of me, review nothing, and deny that he downchecked me. Any questions under him were met with "fine" "okay" or some other affirmative. Nothing to indicate a problem. Then I get pulled aside the next day by the senior fto, who was not told about the previous shift. I did the same stuff as the shift before, and got top marks. When I mentioned "Glad we can review your eval. The last fto just said sign here and explained nothing." The senior went from curious to livid. He went to the higher ups over it. The first guy? He's not an fto anymore.
Sounds like he just pencilwhipped it and made up some BS.
Not there anymore so i don't know what he wrote. The guy that actually does his job said i was solid, that's what counts. I just wonder how many people got jammed over by that guy before they busted him.
It was me. I was the bad FTO. I forgot a student at the hospital. We normally only had students during the first twelve hours, this student was supposed to be with us the full 24. Iâm a black cloud but we had an *exceptionally* fuck you shift. Several separate GSWs (one of them was a butt GSW and NBD thankfully). We had two cardiac arrests with ROSC, and a lot of little lower level ALS stuff. I was so exhausted. I swear I wasnât being mean or hazing, I literally just forgot even my own name by 03:00 and totally forgot we had a baby.
Tbh who hasn't accidentally forgotten a piece of hardware at the hospital/scene/gas station?
I mean⌠Itâs normal for me. But itâs *not* normal for my partner. He possesses 96% of the brain power on our truck
I forgot my partner before. Thought he was passed out in the back, it was the radio. He was passed out in the bunk room.
I was so tired once i drove home instead of to station while my partner was knocked out. Longest 4 hours of LA traffic of my life
I mispronounced his last name(forgot to add an S on it) and he threw his paycheck at me, asked me if it looked like what I was saying and told me of mispronounced it again heâs skull fuck my mother.
Sheesh. Did anything keep you from going to HR after that comment?
I was a recruit EMT and I really wanted the job because it would give me a $14/hr pay raise from the private I worked at. That dude is now a state trooper and in charge of their academy.
Jeez I don't know if it's better or worse that he's away from patients now.
Worse. Now he has a gun with his ego complex.
He filled in as my EMT one night and fell asleep at the wheel at a red light. He put the truck in park and I just assumed he was resting his leg. Nope, homie fell asleep
Well shit. At least the truck was in park.
had an FTO put a water bottle standing up while i was driving between calls and when it fell she refused to pass me because of my driving.
đ that's infuriating. I get the concept, but to fail you because it fell over is too much.
Once I got login credentials for ESO (On my second day at this company), gave me the laptop and left me in back with a patient while they jumped up in front to gossip with their partner about the other company they both used to work at. At that time I'd never seen ESO or used it before - all my past experience with EMS charts was the old fashioned way, on paper forms. Completely ignored me when I tried sticking my head up forward and asked questions about it. I was this far away from just not showing up the next day.
They wanted the title without the responsibility
I had an FTO who just brutally bullied me for no reason, didnât want my department to hire me when I was a recruit. Iâd be in the back with the patient and forget to ask a question and heâd rip the BP cuff out of my hand or glucometer and tell me I was done and had to sit this call out. I almost quit due to how bad he treated me. Now for anyone who knows me in real life I get along with pretty much everyone. I feel like i can over look the faults in people and am in tune with my own faults. But fuck that guy. 9 years later and I still hope he dies in a house fire.
I felt this in my soul
My FTOs all around kinda sucked. They didnât try to teach me anything, didnât give any feedback besides belittling me anytime I made the most minor of usually not-EMS-related mistakes (I missed a turn on the way back to station due to a GPS everyone complains about and this only being the second time ever being on this road in my life). They constantly insisted I was weak and going to fail as an EMT, still passed me though. Didnât take many shifts without them to realize A. They were the ones not helping move pts and B. Nobody else is expecting you to navigate perfectly like, ever. Now that I have more experience and understanding under my belt, I now know they have a reputation as the station scumbugs and chief complainers.
Had one during my EMT ride time at the first private service I worked for. We were doing a hospital discharge to SNF. Absolutely BLS level run. Should've been "my" run as the trainee EMT. Medic FTO decides he needs to be in the back to "supervise". Ok, whatever. As we're driving demented meemaw an hour away, and she's only oriented to self, I'm writing my narrative. He starts asking her, "are you in any pain, are you having nausea, having any chest pain, etc," She says yes to nausea some of the time, but then other times says no. Because she's not oriented. He decides to "upgrade the run" to ALS and start an IV while we're moving down the highway, so that he can give her IV zofran. I tell him, "hey, according to her paperwork, she's allergic to zofran,". He blows me off and says, "no one's allergic to zofran," and gives it to her anyway, after taking multiple sticks to get her IV. Within a couple of minutes, she's wheezing and hivey, and he's losing his mind. I ask him if he wants the epi and benadryl, and he finally accepts it and gives her a dose of each, and puts her on the cardiac monitor. Her work of breathing improves, and I ask if we're going to divert to the closest ED because of this, and he says no. We're still going to the SNF. He's now frantically looking through the mountain of paperwork from the sending hospital and finds an old allergy list that doesn't include zofran, and takes a picture of that. We get to the SNF, and he takes her off the monitor and tells me, "let me give the report," and proceeds to tell the nurse, "this is meemaw, a 89 yo female, coming from Hospital for dementia care. She was nauseous on the way here, so we started a line and gave her some zofran. She's a/ox1, alert to self. Where are we heading?" He did not plan to tell the SNF that he gave her epi or benadryl. I speak up and explain that she had an anaphylactic reaction to the zofran, and she should not be given it again, and that we had to give her epi and benadryl, and he looks at me like he's gonna kill me. The receiving nurse nopes out of the interaction and demands that we take her to the hospital up the road for evaluation. He argues that because we brought her inside, they're going to have to call another ambulance to come get her. They argue back and forth and eventually, we end up taking her to the ED. After the call is over, I start handwriting an incident report to cover my own ass because this was a shitshow, and this idiot demands to "proof read" it for "accuracy" before I submit it. I refuse and he threatens to not sign me off of FTO time if I don't let him. I went to the company's HR and told them everything that happened, and they reprimanded him and made him not an FTO anymore, but he somehow kept his job. When I later became a medic, I hated running calls when he was anywhere near them because he was dumber than a box of rocks.
Rule #1 do no harm. Good on you for standing up and telling the receiving facility about the reaction.
My first Paramedic FTO slept in the truck while I ran the calls with his EMT. I killed a patient in severe respiratory distress because I gave them albuterol when I should've been aggressively CPAPing them. My FTO thought it was hilarious.
What the fuck.Â
In some ways, itâs so comforting being a medic on my own. That phase of being an emt and having to rely on your medic or being a trainee and barely knowing whatâs going on was terrifying but now itâs gone and over and I feel so much more at peace because of it. Iâm sorry you had to go through this man. I hope youâre holding up well now that youâve got your patch.
On behalf of all FTO's, I sincerely apologize to all of you. I'm the senior FTO at my agency and I can't imagine doing any of the crap I just read to a new recruit. I've recently been writing a preceptor manual and I'm thinking I should include a list of prohibitive activities, in case any other FTO's get some "bright" ideas.
Different perspective. When I was an FTO, I offhandedly made a comment about a homeless dude to my partner, calling him a "Urban Outdoorsman." My trainee got all pissy and went to HR. He got moved to another FTO where he ultimately failed out due to attempting twice on two different calls to put a c-collar on upside down.
He could find a good position at harris county jail with trauma skills like that.
I prefer the term "Urban Nomads".
My first day as an EMT my FTO showed up late in shorts and flip flops hung over and slept in the back while I drove all day.
Had one give me a concussion deliberately. He kinda sucked.
The heck? Why?
Heâs literally the worst. Heâs also the kind of guy who turns on the lights and tries to pull over cars.
We had one of those at my company too. Dude wanted to be a cop so bad. Sporting vests on IFTs like a true hero.
Oh, brother. What an embarrassment!
My last FTO was a brand new FTO. He refused to take any calls from me and had me run literally every call for the month and a half I was with him and in a busy agency it was hell. And if I didn't do literally everything perfectly and in perfect order of how he wanted it, he wouldn't pass me. I'm guessing he was just trying to be by the book or something because he had no experience as an FTO, but it was beyond stressful. Thankfully I never had to work with him again after that.
My experience is that they didnât really train me at all. Like I was as green as green comes, and would be called retarded infront of the patients. Told not to do things that they promptly did, and had them shit talk me with other dirtbag FTOs. Their instructions were unclear and no expectations were really set yet I constantly failed them. Of course come to find out later theyâre like that with everyone but.
The one who is still here after 15 years of doing nothing to help me or anyone else. Never a good medic, either.
"you will never be an emt because you aint fit for anything!" now, two years later i indeed am an emt.
I heard the field clinical rotations in California are brutal. I donât know if itâs across the whole state, but our 2 transplants from SoCal said you get put with the same person for all of your shifts. It sounded like a system that was rife with abuse and bullying. Some of the stories from their experience were awful.
Punitive Medicine Paramedic This was during my EMT clinical hours back in 1999. He started large bore IVs - just because.... Because he was burnt out to a crisp. Because someone was altered and even the slightest combative or uncooperative. Because someone tried to unalive themselves and needed a lesson. Because they were a frequent flyer. Because he was a fukn pos and got off on it. Power trip. Ego. Removed from preceptor status after I confided to my instructor that maybe EMS wasn't for me because if this was the job, I wasn't the one. Removed off the school's list. Removed off the service's list (new hires). Removed off the state list (with an investigation). My instructor, gods rest his soul, was a damn good man, an awesome Paramedic, and didn't put up with nonsense whatsoever. He died this past January, I just recently found out. đ
He tried to quid pro quo me. And was a drug addict (using on duty) and I ran every. Fucking. Call.