Barbara Johnson, Part 1, Transcript Section 16

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Barbara Johnson, Part 1
Transcript Section 16

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KAREN: Do you remember what some of the subjects were -- what kinds of things did you learn in that training?

BARBARA: Well, when we first -- when we first started, we started by being able to take our vital signs and stuff like that. And first aid.

And then we started learning about the body and, you know, what every part of the body was for, you know. And then we'd go -- we'd do a lot of that.

And then later on, we'd learn about -- we'd work with the pharmacy, learn about the medication, you know, the ones that we could -- we were able to give to patients.

Because there was only certain kinds of medicines we could, you know, give. We couldn't give any -- we couldn't give any narcotics. We had a few that were -- that they'd okay for us to give for emergency, but not very much.

But as far as antibiotics and stuff like that, we had to go through all that with the pharmacy.

And then also with physical therapy, we went -- we had training in that.
And then we'd have training in nutrition, you know. And then in mental -- mental health. We had training in that.

Then we also had training in, you know, delivering a baby, mother's pregnancy from the time she gets her care to the time she has her child, her baby, I mean. So we -- we had to -- you know, it's a lot of training.

KAREN: Yeah.

BARBARA: You know, they try to teach us all in, like, three weeks or four weeks.

KAREN: Yeah. That seems like a lot to learn.

BARBARA: It is. It was a lot to learn.

KAREN: And did they keep giving you updates through your years of working?

BARBARA: Oh, yes. Every year, every once a year or twice -- or every two years, you know, sometimes they would -- we would have to go to training because we had to keep up our certification. And it was like every six years, we have to redo our certification, you know, and we -- we'd take the tests and stuff over again to make sure we're still up to par on our education and doing all right.

And then we'd have training also like in diabetes, you know, we had training in that. And we'd go to the symposium for the EMS program, we'd go to that.

We'd go to diabetes training, you know, and then nutrition, all those kinds of things we'd have to -- we have to go to, you know, and learning about child care and then also child abuse, you know.

KAREN: Yeah.

BARBARA: We had to go to training on those kinds of things. We just keep updating everything, you know, especially with the Public Health nurse, too. The medicine changes all the time, you know, on the immunizations. So.