A bit of wavy history (others more in the know feel free to correct my GOF memory)
Cannot remember the exact numbers, but the first few groups of grads were about 16-20 per graduating class. There was no such thing as an internship and the idea was that graduates would apply for jobs using traditional practices. Successful applicants were only going to spend something like 12 weeks in training before becoming paramedics
Something like 2-4 people got accepted from one of the initial groups and an irate parent who had forked out many thousands in uni fees went to their parliamentarian. The initial number of successful job seekers was inflated somewhat to the Press and parliament by offering some of the unsuccessful applicants ATS jobs. After this, SAAS management rethought the whole process and the end result was the development of the Internship (initially 12 months??) which was then further stretched out to include the NES components.
What's the 'veteran' paramedic's view on the graduates applying for these internships? I hope they aren;tautomatically presumed to be incapable of doing a job they've studied for 3 years to do... simply because they haven't had as many birthdays as everyone else,
Yep - that is pretty much the view - just the same as it is for any graduate in any profession. Uni does not teach you how to do a job, it just gives you a truckload of generic knowledge. In every profession you have to empty the bedpans and clean up the lab before they award you the Nobel Prize
There is a great scene in "Nurse Jackie" where she tells her graduate nurse to put her finger on a dressing on the neck of a trauma victim. "But you always treat me like a child - I want to do something important", says the Newbie.
Nurse Jackie tells her to take her finger away from the dressing, which dramatically shoots off under the pressure of an arterial bleed. Nurse Jackie: "See, it IS important"
