Subaqua Sternal Rubs

This morning I was a proctor for a state EMT Practical Exam at one of the local community colleges. Now I can understand a little test apprehension and anxiety-related mistakes, but some of these students really didn't have a clue. Now I did my first Basic class there (all those years ago… when the College was still using LP-5's…), so I know the instruction isn't lacking, if you put a little effort in it… But some of these people didn't manage to do that… Some of the more egregious errors:

• Lack of taking Body Substance Isolation precautions on the AED/CPR station… Ok, just a silly test-anxiety related error. No biggie.
• The guy that let me do continuous rounds of CPR and shocking for 10 minutes, without ever transporting the patient.
• The guy that did not direct me to stop CPR when verifying absence of a pulse before applying the AED. When advised that the patient did have a pulse, (since I was doing compressions) he proceeded to apply the AED and shock a patient, for all he knew, had a pulse.
• The guy that took off the defib patches, and turned off the AED between shocks.
• The girl that applied a cervical collar so that the back piece touched the patient's external occipital protuberance. (Just slightly big)
• The girl that checked for distal pulse, motor and sensation with the frac-pak splint half on. No this doesn't count as checking PMS before and after spint application - you actually need to do it twice. (And this was her second time failing the long-bone immobilization station. How do you do that?)

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