jessrose

Irene - it's quite possible that it was just fluke. I'm sure there are different instructors for each course who handle the material differently. Ours was taught by a young EMS gentleman and a nurse. Both admitted they were pretty beat and wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible, which is understandable. The problem with that is we rushed through the material extremely quickly. The dummies were old and didn't illustrate when you gave a successful breath, but at the same time the instructor's stressed the dangers of providing too much or too little air. They gave us sanitary mouth covers as though we were going to practice the regular mouth to mouth technique, and then we never used them, just the bags. None of the AED machines worked at all, so the only thing you could do was stick the electrode on the dummy. They fast forwarded through several parts of the video and we didn't even reference the book. At the very end, they give you a 20 question test which I thought could potentially be a little tricky given the specific information we rapidly covered. I could easily have seen someone not pass since I think you can only get 4 or 5 wrong. I would recommend just asking a lot of questions if it looks like your class if going the same. Just scanning the book several of us noticed things that we needed clarification on. In some cases we had received part of the instruction but were missing another piece of information. Some of it ended up being on the test. I'm sure we'll get more instruction in school, but it would be nice to feel more comfortable given the type of training we received.

So I had my orientation yesterday. Since there has already been so much helpful information supplied on this forum, I found the orientation to be a bit of a review of things I already knew. It was nice to get our books (heavy!) and uniforms though. I totally agree about the fit of the pants. I tried both types (cargo and non cargo) and they both fit horribly. Mediums were too large and completely falling down, while the smalls were very tight across the rear with about 4 inches of extra material around the back of the waist since the drawstring doesn't go all the way around as already mentioned Now, when I asked if I could buy pants elsewhere, the student told me that while I could supplement with pants I buy on my own, that I absolutely have to buy the complete package provided by the school - 2 pants, 2 shirts, 1 labcoat. I'm not sure if this is the new response they're using to counteract inquiries about the pants, but I didn't really know what to say so I bought them from the school. She also told me I can expect the pants to shrink a little bit, only making the fit situation worse. If I do end up having to buy other pants, I'll pretty much have two useless pairs that I paid for. On a separate note I took the required CPR class last night and was very dissapointed with it. I'm not sure if my expectations were too high or it was just an "off" night, but there were a lot of issues ranging from non-working equipment to the class being cut about an hour and a half short.

Just after doing an initial search it seems like there's lots of availability for these books on half.com and ebay alone, even for the latest additions. You could easily save over half the costs of what you would spend on the used editions with a little extra work and investigation. Ladybug - I'm still working on my post count. I should be able to reply to PMs any day now!

I found Specialty Book's website and was able to get to the area where you search on institution to get your list of books. I don't think I would have ever found this on my own. Very cool! I'm going to compare these prices against some of the other online textbook mediums...

I have to say that this thread has been an awesome source of information for what to expect at BHSN in the fall. Thanks to LadyBug and Th0r for the most recent posts regarding scheduling and books. Its really been a huge help!

I think it's important to keep in mind that email is not a strong point for some people. Yes - I think it's important to come across as pleasant and professional when communicating vial email, however for many email can be a struggle. I would recommend trying to speak to her again on the phone before taking her attitude to heart. You may find that your phone conversation goes completely differently. Email is also subjective and can easily be taken incorrectly depending on who is doing the reading. Just food for thought.