UNDISCLOSED LOCATION - "I picked medical as my job and I love my job," Senior Airman Shana Smith said.
Smith, 386th Expeditionary Medical Group medical technician, can see more patients in a day than classmates from her graduating class.
"I'm from a really small town; I graduated with 43 people in my class," said Smith. "I left for basic training in September right after I graduated high school."
According to enlist.military.com and dosomething.org, education, is the number one reason people join in the military, but getting an education was not a priority for Smith.
"I joined because I was not ready to go to school," she said. "I'm good at school, but I was just tired of school and I knew I wanted to get some medical experience first."
As a medical technician in the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing clinic, Smith's days are far from procedural.
"We check patients in, we set-up procedures for the docs, we do a lot of skin tag freezing's, we can remove sutures, we respond to 911 calls, we're pretty much the doctors helpers for everything," she said.
Air Force medical technicians receive their technical training at Sheppard Air Force Base, Wichita Falls, Texas, a course Smith described as "rough."
"It was a lot of information crammed into a short time period," she said. "We do the National Registry Emergency Medical Technician course in the first two months and that's where most people fail out."
After passing the NREMT test, the students move to the clinical portion of class where they learn how to conduct in-office screenings and how to take vital signs of patients.
"I meet some really cool people in my job that just want to chat," she said. "They thank you for the smallest things and they ask 'how are you doing' when I'm supposed to be asking them."
Back at her home station of Wright Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, Smith works in the reproductive endocrinology and infertility clinic a job she describes as very rewarding.
"I see them from the first visit when they come in frustrated and angry because they can't have a baby," she said. "We give them all of their meds, we work with them week by week checking their progression, and when you look at their ultrasound and they're pregnant it's awesome."
She unfortunately also deals with the heartbreak of working in the REI clinic.
"We had a patient whose labs were not looking right, so we all started preparing for the worst and when we did the ultrasound and saw the heartbeat we were all excited," she said. "But they came in for their next visit a week and a half later and there was nothing."
"In clinics like that where you see the same people over and over, you kind of get attached to your patients," she said.
Fortunately for Smith, being an Air Force medical technician allows her to move to almost any base world-wide with a clinic or hospital.
"As a 4N we can work medical inpatient unit, surgical inpatient unit, intensive care unit or we can work ward," she said. "So for permanent change of station moves, I can go pretty much anywhere."
Smith is scheduled to redeploy back to Wright Patterson in less than a week, where she will be transferring to the ICU to broaden her experience.
"I wouldn't mind staying in women's health, I like the hours and I like the people, but I know to better myself as a technician I need to branch out," she said. "I was nervous just working with my first male patient because I only deal with girls all the time."
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