Today I passed my FPC exam.
I chose not to take a preparatory course because of how expensive they were. All of my learning was self directed. I wanted to make an advice post (in the style of another legendary post on another subreddit) for any other Paramedics trying to do the same.
I’ve been studying for the FPC for seven months. For my studying, I bought two books - 1) AAOS Critical Care Transport Third Edition, 2) Flight Medical Provider: A Ground and Flight Critical Care Guide. I also used pocket prep for test questions. Other resources I used are Deranged Physiology (https://derangedphysiology.com/main/home) - a great series of blog posts by an Australian ICU Physician. It offered the best overview of vents I’ve seen.
My approach was the following. First, I promised myself I’d spend 3 hours every day reading the AAOS Critical Care Book. Before I did anything else, I read every chapter of the book twice. This took about three months. I took no notes, but dogmarked interesting pages. I treated it like my Bible.
Then I bought a journal (Peter Pauper Press makes a great book style one) and reread every chapter of the AAOS book, taking detailed notes as I did. When I got sick of reading the AAOS book, I’d read ventilator posts from deranged physiology, take pocketprep questions, and read chapters from Flight Medical Provider. I spent 4-6 hours every day doing this. Anything interesting went in the Peter Pauper notebook. I ended up doing every pocketprep question with an average score of 63%.
For labs, I took a ream of paper, and cut it into six squares. Overall I had several hundred squares. On each square, I wrote down the normal lab values chart you see often, except I made an extra category for calcium so it looked like this >-|-|-<. I’d also write down the commonly seen CBC blood diagram >—< and a homemade diagram that included Lactates, GFR, aPTT, Troponin + some other select values and equations. I filled in every square like this for an hour or so daily for a month, until I felt confident that I had mastered lab values.
I did the same thing for medications. I focused heavily on pressors and RSI meds. Every day, little squares of paper, lots of time invested. Study until I know it, take a 15 minute break, get distracted, start writing from scratch. It’s amazing how much you forget when you’re distracted.
I also found common Critical Care Transport Equipment - vents, pumps, ETC - and I drew detailed diagrams of the equipment (in use) in my notebook. This didn’t help for the test but it helps in the field.
One last optional thing I did was I booked a short flight on a helicopter to see if I’d like being in a helicopter.
Anyway, I took the exam today and passed it. It was a lot harder than I expected and at the end I was 50/50 on whether I’d actually pass. My advice is to really know your medications, lab values and your patient physiology. Gas laws are also a must - many of these questions on the exam.
After being in EMS for a decade it feels great to be certified flight medic. Doubly so because I took it in the same place I took my EMT-B years ago! Ask any questions you want in the comments or DM me, I’ll be happy to answer.
Yes, I have a couple of questions: are beans allowed to be in chili? why or why not?
What happened to Ludacris’ hoes in different area codes? Nobody ever followed up. Are the hoes okay?
I was always preoccupied with finding out just who exactly let the dogs out?
If you strip the joke and look at the structure of the song, the question is mis-aimed. Who Let the Dogs Out? isn’t actually about identifying a culprit. The “dogs” in the lyrics refer to obnoxious men at a party, not literal animals. The refrain isn’t a request for information; it’s a scolding device. It’s saying: Who unleashed this behavior? Who allowed this nonsense into the room?
So the literal answer is: nobody let actual dogs out.
The functional answer is: the song uses the line to call out men acting badly.
There’s no mystery to solve. The question itself is the point.
Nothing happened to them. The premise was a joke built on a gimmick: a touring artist claiming he had willing partners in every city. The song never established them as characters with arcs, conflicts, or consequences. It wasn’t a narrative that left loose ends; it was a punchline stretched to three minutes.
If you treat it like a real scenario, the simplest answer is that these were fictional composites of groupies, not individuals whose fates were meant to be tracked. They don’t need follow-up because there was nothing to resolve. The song’s entire structure is: I travel; I hook up; here are the area codes. That’s it.
They’re “okay” in the sense that they never existed beyond the rhyme scheme.
“If you’re talking Texas chili, beans aren’t part of the traditional definition — it’s meat, chiles, and spices. That version treats beans as a filler that dilutes the flavor.
If you’re talking general American chili, beans are completely acceptable and common. It depends on whether you care about tradition or just making something that tastes good to you.”
You kinda da goat for this G
This sounds very similar to what I did, in that I did not take an online or in-person course; I also read several books including the Flight Medical Provider book and took notes. It sounds like you went into a fair amount more detail than I did though, and I would imagine you got more out of that than what you might have in an average course.
I think being an autodidact and a paramedic go hand-in-hand, and going about any advanced certification this way is leaning into our strengths.
Also it is basically the blueprint for careers in the medical field. You have to do research and teach yourself to keep up!