Things They Don't Teach You in EMT School
- Marshall Woodmansee
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
A field-tested guide for new EMTs, from a Royal Ambulance training officer who's now a Licensed Vocational Nurse.
EMT school gives you the protocols, the anatomy, and the skills checklist. It does not give you the hundred small things you only learn in the back of an ambulance: the cues, the shortcuts, and the people skills that turn a nervous new hire into someone a patient trusts.
We sat down with Malik Thomas, who started at Royal Ambulance as an 18-year-old fresh out of high school. He was so shy at first that his own training officer had to push him to talk to patients. A few years later he had personally trained 28 new EMTs, built his own study guides from scratch, and earned "Best in Leadership" in an accelerated Licensed Vocational Nursing program. Along the way he kept a running list of everything he wished someone had told him on day one.
Here are some of the things that made his list of things they don't teach you in EMT school.
Read the room before you read the chart
A patient's room tells you a story if you know how to look. Malik teaches every trainee to scan for the small stuff:
A walker or cane by the bed usually means the patient can bear weight and ambulate. That changes how you plan your move before you ever touch them.
This is not in the textbook. Small tips like this make you faster, safer, and more prepared the moment you step in.
Know what the wristbands are really telling you
Color-coded patient bands carry critical information that no one stops to explain to you in school.
A pink band can indicate a mastectomy or a fistula on that side, which means do not take a blood pressure on that arm. Missing it can genuinely harm a patient.
The lesson underneath the lesson: assume every band, sticker, and chart note means something, and ask when you don't know. The nurses, the chart, and your partner are all there to fill the gaps EMT school left.
Use shortcuts to keep medications straight
Medications are where a lot of new EMTs feel underwater. One of Malik's trainees kept mixing up two completely different common drugs: metoprolol (for blood pressure) and metformin (for diabetes). So Malik built a cheat sheet around the patterns.
Learn the suffixes. Drug names ending in "-olol" (metoprolol, atenolol, carvedilol) are beta-blockers: blood pressure and heart medications.
Once you start grouping medications by their endings instead of memorizing each one cold, the list stops feeling endless. Building your own quick-reference sheet (and actually using it on every call) is one of the fastest ways to get comfortable.
The things they don't teach you in EMT school: talking to people
Ask any experienced EMT what was hardest at the start, and a lot of them won't say a clinical skill. They'll say this: how do you talk to a stranger who may be having the worst day of their life?
Malik's training officer gave him a trick that he now passes to everyone he trains. Learn three things about every patient. Ask about their day. Ask where they're from. Notice the Raiders jersey and ask about the game. It does two things at once: it calms your own nerves, and it reminds you (and them) that this is a person, not a transport.
Start one small conversation and the rest gets easier. That single habit turned a shy teenager into someone patients open up to. It will do the same for you.
The real lesson
Here's the thing every one of these tips has in common: you learn them by paying attention, asking questions, and learning from the people around you. The EMTs who grow fastest aren't the ones who memorized the most in school—they're the ones who treat every call as a chance to pick up one more thing and write it down.
That's exactly the kind of growth Royal Ambulance is built around. Malik came in with no healthcare background and is now a Licensed Vocational Nurse. The foundation was laid in the back of an ambulance, one call at a time.
Curious where an EMT role at Royal Ambulance could take you? Explore careers with us.
