Medical & Psych

[FirefighterRI]

Hey I had a quick question about psychs and medical exams here in RI. Ive read about them in general but we all know things are always different here in RI. For example, I read the FDNY medical exam can take up to 6 hours where they have you hooked up to a monitor while on a treadmill... For those of you that are on, what was your medical and pysch like? Did the doc pull out all kinds of contraptions and were they sticklers on your medical history etc? Did you just take a standard 400+ question psych or where you looking at ink stains???

[cfdeng3]

The physical is nothing like FDNY. FDNY disqualifies you just for having asthma. Here it depends on the department. There is an NFPA standard for medical requirements that may be followed. It will include a background medical history, vision, hearing, pulmonary function, blood work and physical exam.

I had to take a psych to get on West Warwick. That was about 16 years ago but it was several hundred questions with many asking you the same thing just worded differently. It took at least 4 hours and my head was pounding when I left. I never met with a shrink, I guess I passed the test.

[Steeda83]

when i was hired a little over a year ago my physical consisted of a medical questionaire, chest x-ray, pulmonary function test, blood work, 12-lead ekg, hearing and vision tests, and a run of the mill physical exam.

the psych was over at the uri building in providence, which is the same that most fire and police departments in ri use, they said you had 6 hours to complete the psych which consisted of a personal background questionaire(such as have you ever been in an auto accident, participated in underaged drinking, etc..) small timed math portion then a timed quick little iq test and then the actual psych test which took about 4 hours, then about 2 weeks later you had to come back and meet with a shrink to go over your results, if nothing seemd out of the ordinary to them you were in and out in about 15 minutes if the test raised some questions about you, then you'd be there for an hour or more, with the psychs everything about you is judged, from the way your dressed to the way you listen to them and respond back to them, regardless of if they tell you what you must wear, etc..be on top of your game from the minute you walk in the front door and you'll be fine, it's not that bad

[FirefighterRI]

Steeda you're on in NP no? Whats the pulmonary like? So some depts are sticklers and others its less rigid. Did you have to go through all that in Cranston? Do you know if its still chiefs disgression or are they bound to the results? I only ask cuz I was prescribed an inhaler when i was a kid. I kid you not it was because the stupid primatine mist commercials were all over the air and i thought they were cool (im talking like 8 yrs old.) Told my mom i had trouble breathing and next thing you know "Your son has asthma". That may be on some old school records but i havent had an inhaler prescribed to me since. Dont want to put asthma on a friggin questionare because of that and then lose a gig...

[Steeda83]

nah im not on np, the pulmonary test is just the pft...you blow into a tube and the nurse/resp. therapist/tech etc..tells you to blow blow blow blow...and you keep blowing until they tell you to stop, thats it. from what i've heard it's all up to them..even the psych if the shrink says you have issues in certain areas they can still hire you..the psych isnt to figure out if you're crazy or not, it's to see if you fit the mold of what they expect a firefighter to be