Street Medic Hip Pocket Class
Introduction/Pre-class.
Hi everyone, my name is Rayne. I am a licensed EMT in the state of Ohio, a long time activist, anarchist, and a nonbinary transgender woman who uses they/she pronouns.
Because of a fun conversation I had with another person on the Fedi about this topic, I became interested in possibly doing like a regular "hip pocket class" (a slang term used in the military for informal classes done during downtime) on "street medic" stuff. I did a poll and people seem to want this so here I am!
Today I'm going to be covering some basics, and this more serves as a "pre class". I have a plan to do class #1 next week, which is going to cover considerations and procedures that focus on what happens before patient contact is made.
But today I just want to go over what a "street medic" is, what functions do they serve, and some considerations if you so choose to be one or be in auxillary to one. Even if you just want to help with emergencies that may occur while doing activism, I think this class will be useful.
Please feel free to reply to me with questions and feedback at anytime.
So let's dive in!
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So what is a street medic?
In summary, street medics are people who perform a field medical technician/practitioner role in a more informal capacity than EMTs/paramedic that work for public and private sector emergency medical services.
Interestingly, street medics actually predate civilian medics. The first known use of the term was used by black collectivist groups in the early 60s, during the civil rights movement. Organized state sanctioned militaries and informally organized insurgent groups had medics much before this of course.
(Con't)
So how do you become a street medic?
There honestly isn't a simple answer to that.
You're a little bit more free in how you can obtain training and become qualified. You can go the formal route like I did, and you can take it even farther and go to nursing school, paramedic school, whatever. You can also go to informal classes and pick the brains of other street medics or people who have acted in a medical capacity during protests, riots, autonomous zones, w/e.
However you choose to get your training, two things are monumentously important here.
1. Be aware of yourself, your knowledge, your skills, and your limitations. Constantly learn and get better in a practical way, and only do medical procedures you are very comfortable with doing.
2. You will have to sell yourself. This may make formal training helpful here. Having a CPR card, a nursing/medical assistant degree, EMT/medic license may make people within your activist roles take you more seriously as someone who can handle medical emergencies.**
(Con't)
**Formal training downsides
The problem with formal training is it really doesn't teach you how to do your job beyond treating the patient.
In formal EMS training, access to support, easy transport to higher level of care, and the ability to use law enforcement as a method of securing the scene* is not only assumed omnipresent but encouraged. However in a hostile environment where public services don't have access and law enforcement is often a hostile antagonist or even effectively an enemy combatant, these are things that only experience and people experienced in this work can teach you.
I do think that you should obtain a CPR/first aid card, I also think that wilderness first aid might be helpful, especially in finding ways to help patients with light, packable gear. Also, most military medic manuals are available online and anyone can access them, feel free to use them.
*Note: Tbc, the way they teach us in EMT school to simply use LE to secure the scene any time things are even slightly hairy is problematic, and I don't condone it. There's a whole conversation outside of the scope of this where we can talk about how LE fucks patient care. But more I just wanted to say that there's a huge contrast you will have to reconcile with being a licensed EMT and street medic.
(Con't)
+1 to learning basic first aid at least, by going down the formal face to face route for this the trainer can make sure your technique is right.
I did first aid in the summer and the Annie (the model thing we use for CPR) has a sensor that told you if your compressions were too fast or slow as it displayed a led light to indicate.
