Dad talking me out of becoming a paramedic. Help?

[sweetpete]

Whatever a person does for their job, be it an EMT-B, CNA, RN, MD, or cleaning toilets at the airport, do it to the best of your ability and do it with pride. There are no small jobs, just small people, or small people who look down on others...

Not discouraging anyone from moving up and futhering their education and career, just do it because it's WHAT YOU WANT TO DO, not because someone else is telling you to or because you're feeling 'shamed' into it.

Actually, there seems to have been ALOT of great points made on this thread. But I have to admit, the one I quoted really struck me as well thought out and spot on.

Perhaps try moving into an AEMT role. Work on that and see if that works before you commit to going all the way to medic.

Personally, as soon as I got into EMS, I knew for CERTAIN that paramedic was a must. I knew myself well enough to know that I wanted to be the "lead role" as someone put it. And that illustration was right on also.

I hope you get things figured out. Whatever you do, be the best you can at it.

Take care.

 

[Akulahawk]

It all kind of boils down to attitude and what you really want to do. You can choose to be the rockstar that aggressively pursues more education about how to be a better Paramedic... and along the way you may just find out that you're one of the best Paramedics in the industry. You can choose to be a Paramedic and just do what the protocols say for you to do. You can choose to be a Paramedic because you want to be a firefighter.

The basic education you'll get as a Paramedic will be inadequate for advancing your understanding of disease processes and how to address them. The better you understand disease processes, the better you'll be at adapting your equipment on hand to treating the problem. You will likely not be able to fix very many problems in the field, but you'll have a very concrete understanding that the things you do in the field will potentially have a great effect upon that patient's clinical course while in hospital.

Believe it or not, the same thing applies to being a Basic. You can choose to just do the minimum, or you can set yourself on a path of learning and understanding things far beyond what you'd need to know to work as a Basic. As Vene stated, a good Basic is well worth their weight in gold. While they work as support for me, the Paramedic, they also keep their eyes out on the scene for safety and they keep their eyes on other aspects of patient care, all while anticipating what I'm going to need done.

I chose to become a Paramedic because I wanted to be able to help my patients more. While there is some additional responsibility as a Paramedic, my desire to help them and learn what I can along the way to improve my ability to help them was far greater than my additional responsibility burden. That also led to me deciding to go to nursing school. However, that was a very personal decision I had to make... to improve myself and my ability to help others or just do the job enough to get by.

 

[djarmpit]

You won't necessarily be stuck as an EMT for the rest of your life if you choose a good company and promote within. You could become a supervisor, crew chief, human resources/emt, work as an ER tech, blah blah blah. There's lots of options to go from as an EMT that doesnt involve the medic or fire route