Welcome to ‘screw up and someone dies’ summer camp. Take some time to smile at my clever alliteration because it’s the only time you’ll be smiling all day.
You’re on your feet until everyone in your tent is dead or stable. You don’t sleep anymore. You nap for maybe a couple hours a time, always in your scrubs and always ready to be back here at moment’s notice. Those of you here who enlisted as medics because they thought it was a way to join the army without really joining the army are in for an exhausting, bloody, traumatizing experience.
There are 32 patient simulators in the corner of the room. One of them for each of you. Your task? Get them onto the hospital bed, push one dose of painkillers into their system, and locate and stop the bleed all under thirty seconds. Fail to do this, the patient dies and you get to start over. If any of you manage to do it right five times in a row, you can break for lunch. If not, we work through that and maybe even dinner until I’m confident you’re competent enough to keep a patient alive their first five minutes in this tent. Your time starts now.