Hey guys, a short description:
Upper 20’s male been a paramedic almost 4 years here in California. I’ve been through a college academy, volunteer firefighter, worked as a fire aid for a local department. Work in private EMS, and I was hired briefly at a department as a ff/medic for about 6 months but left (yes I quit) because I became a new father at the same time of probation and decided to save my marriage and spend time with my child rather than be a probie.
Anyways my son’s older now, and it’s been a few years, my schedule has normalized and I’m ready to give another department a chance. I know I can do the job. What I’m asking advice for is when I was a probie, what I particularly had trouble with was seeing how much I really didn’t know and how stupid I felt doing the job.
I did fine with EMS calls and doing normal probie things like cleaning. However what felt extremely hard were the things I didn’t practice often or at all (bk radio with normal radio, vehicle stabilization and cutting, what do I actually do on a smoke alarm) basically things you can’t learn until you do them.
I know it sounds dumb but it seemed like everyone else has been doing these things since they were 5. I feel very stupid when I don’t know what I’m doing, I just want to ask does anyone else get this way, and what’s a good range of time to ACTUALLY feel comfortable in this job (you can come in to the station and not worry about feeling like a complete idiot, just a normal idiot)