EMS is public safety.

[emt seeking first job]

The whole thing about people being EMTs thinking they are cops.

What I do not get is why people who have this great thirst for advanced medical training, why not become a doctor or a nurse ?

Back in the 80s, as a student, I was in the former USSR. Each ambulance had an actual doctor. In fact there wer veru few para-professionals in healthcare. Most people a doctor or a nurse.

Being a doctor required quite a bit of training but held not to much in way of compensation. Back then, compensation was more with where you got to live, shop, vacation and send your kids to school then monetary salary.

A lot of front line doctors were not so well compensated, but they did it anyway.

 

[mycrofft]

EVOC?! Wonder how long the training is to fly a B-52?

"I'd say he's flightworthy"

 

[HotelCo]

What I do not get is why people who have this great thirst for advanced medical training, why not become a doctor or a nurse ?

How do you know they aren't in the process of becoming a nurse/doc?

 

[usalsfyre]

What I do not get is why people who have this great thirst for advanced medical training, why not become a doctor or a nurse ?

Why hold yourself back to being just slightly above a taxi-driver?

 

[emt seeking first job]

Take nothing for granted, there is no "common sense" these days:

For money I am an instructor at a driving school.

In Brooklyn, many people put learning to drive and do not have access to cars.

Half of what I have to do would seem like common sense. I take nothing for granted.

People either wear flip flops or too large boots, dont tie hair back, chew gum or have drink with them, will not turn their phone off and then reflexivly dig for it to check it when it goes off, look down at their feet, dont put the car in gear, dont turn the key on, getting into pissing matches with strangers over going first, and the list goes and on.....

In my EMT class, a large portion of people were on their devices texting, people left in the middle of training drills because they had to "take this call", if I was running an EMT class, I would have a phone off and put away rule.

I cant sya anything in my service out loud because I am a noob, but a guy around my age who has been there 20+ years gets rightly pissed off with people texting on calls, or while riding around.

And the effing eating, EMS could be more discrete, small snack, a bite hear and there, I see rigs on the side of the road with dudes digging into a huge trough of junk food. Literally I saw a dude with a huge KFC bucket in his lap chowing away like a lion.

I think the 100 hours of education, enhanced with 50 hours of both emergency and non emergency driver training , and a bit of decourum could go along ways to improve EMS and perceptions of it.

 

[emt seeking first job]

Why hold yourself back to being just slightly above a taxi-driver?

There is never a sitaution when taxi drivers can disregard the traffic law, not that there is anything wrong with being that, they should have higher standards for that also.

I worked a few years in a high end car service that charged $90 for a sedan, not a stretch, we had to be clean, no cologne, no cell phone, no idle chatter, had to know english, had to be able to navigate ourselves, and drive conservativley.....this service charged $90/hr, round trip from the garage just for doing what a driver is supposed to.

The car service I use, $35 to the airport, you get a dirty old car, a guy who smells, either can not talk english or wont shut up, you have to coach him on directions, put up with his choice of radio and you get nautious from the jack rabbit acceleration and hard breaking.

The car service I worked for was around $185 for the airports. And it was not a stretch limo. Just a clean car with a driver that did what he was supposed to do.

 

[MrBrown]

Lets see, Brown has the choice of some bloke with 100 hours of "training" and an oxygen tank who is probably a siren freak or a cab driver to take Brown to the hospital .... Brown is going to choose the cab driver

 

[ArcticKat]

We've transitioned to the "Mobile Health Services" concept. During our shift we routinely visit high risk individuals who require some sort of medical treatments that can be done in the home. Dressing changes, welfare checks, living conditions evaluation, and post surgical evaluations are just some of our cases.

We also provide occasional clinic days to treat and/or refer clients to medical care.

 

[medichopeful]

And the 100 hours of training + experience is enough to package, load and go to the....badda bing.....hospital for health care so the patient can get better.

Yep, that's pretty much ALL it's good for, which is sad. And that is NOT medical care. That's providing a ride to the hospital, with very, VERY few interventions.

People never get better in an ambulance, their diseases and not cured, their injuries are not fixed, however, they are stabilized and safely and rapidly transported to a place were they do get health care.

If people continue to have this attitude like you do, then the above statement will continue to be true, which is horrifying. True, they are stabilized and in many cases that's all that can be done without surgery, but there are many, MANY times when stabilization and THEN CARE can actually be done in the ambulance.

 

[medichopeful]

It takes a minimum of four years to become a Paramedic and six to become and Intensive Care Paramedic.

Wow that sucks! 150 hours here is MORE than enough to provide good care!
h34r:h34r:

/end sarcasm

 

[medichopeful]

How do you know they aren't in the process of becoming a nurse/doc?

Because it says it in our signatures!

 

[MrBrown]

It is obvious the author has no understanding as to what health care actually is

 

[abckidsmom]

A job is a job regardless of level of pay or even no pay.

A hobby is building models or creating art.

Professionalism and higher standards in conduct and training will get people paid more, but again, if it was about the money, why do people in my service forgo paid work to ride in an unpaid ambulance ?

Because they are working at their hobby. I love EMS, and have been in this field for a long time. For the last 8 years, I've been, for all intents and purposes, a hobbyist. I am a stay at home mom who WAS a full-time medic...the call volume of full-time EMS and the ability to make it the primary focus of your work life make you a professional. It's totally possible for a volunteer to act like a professional, but it's really, really rare for a volunteer to actually be on par with a real professional.

In the US, at least, you cant be a $10 an hour EMT with a criminal conviction, however, you can have a health care position. That paramedic who got the conviction for the traffic incident now works.....in health care, in a hospital, but he can never be a paramedic again.

I don't want a $10/hr criminal in my house at my most difficult time. It's hard enough knowing the people who ARE coming in the house. At least at the hospital, there's ALWAYS supervision.

And the 100 hours of training + experience is enough to package, load and go to the....badda bing.....hospital for health care so the patient can get better.

People never get better in an ambulance, their diseases and not cured, their injuries are not fixed, however, they are stabilized and safely and rapidly transported to a place were they do get health care.

People get better in an ambulance all the freaking time. It's rarely dramatic like on TV, but there are plenty of times when the resources available in the ambulance are all the patient needs at that time.

If a person is having an asthma attack and their inhaler isn't working, but I come in and give them a couple of nebs on the way to the hospital, the hospital is going to look them over and fast track them home. What they had was not an emergency, but a failure of their primary care to adequately meet their needs. They didn't actually need tertiary care.

 

[18G]

In the US, at least, you cant be a $10 an hour EMT with a criminal conviction, however, you can have a health care position. That paramedic who got the conviction for the traffic incident now works.....in health care, in a hospital, but he can never be a paramedic again.

This is false. You can be an EMS provider with a criminal conviction depending on what the conviction is and how much time has passed since the conviction.

Some states do have "barrier crimes" which is a list of offenses that are meant to automatically bar someone from taking a position in healthcare (yes, EMS is healthcare) but are not always absolute.

Nobody is perfect and what someone did 15yrs ago should not automatically preclude them from a profession.

I don't want a $10/hr criminal in my house at my most difficult time. It's hard enough knowing the people who ARE coming in the house. At least at the hospital, there's ALWAYS supervision.

A single, isolated charge does not always make someone a "criminal". Sometimes it's just a case of bad judgement and circumstantial factors that do not parallel a person's character.

 

[abckidsmom]

A single, isolated charge does not always make someone a "criminal". Sometimes it's just a case of bad judgement and circumstantial factors that do not parallel a person's character.

I was just being inflammatory. There has to be a line somewhere, and if you can't mind your impulses such that you get busted doing whatever, I'm willing to let it roll.

Dana, who just housed a family member for a year who'd had a felony conviction. I still love him and know that he's a great person, but he's ineligible for a lot of opportunties because he did something really STUPID.

 

[18G]

^^^^ gotcha

 

[JPINFV]

Sanitation is public works.

Sanitation saves more lives than EMS could ever hope to, as well as do more to impact public health than EMS could ever hope to. Using a pure definition of public safety, sanitation ensures the public's safety much more than EMS does.

 

[usalsfyre]

Sanitation saves more lives than EMS could ever hope to, as well as do more to impact public health than EMS could ever hope to. Using a pure definition of public safety, sanitation ensures the public's safety much more than EMS does.

My point exactly. You could further make the argument EMS isn't really essential to public safety (about to play devil's advocate here). Without police services modern cities descend into lawlessness, without sanitation you have wide spread disease and filth and without fire protection half the city burns down. Any of these results in the collapse of the city. Without EMS you have? Certainly not wide spread death and destruction. People would still find there way to hospitals, as they were able to before the 1960s. More deaths might occur, but not enough to cause complete collapse of civilization.

So what are we if not essential? Well, right now nothing. We have a REALLY hard time selling our value on anything other than emotion. We have to potential however, to be cost savers by reducing hospital admissions, not to mention add to patients lives by delivering care in the home before it's needed. This requires more education and a change on focus, away from the "public safety" persona and the "us vs them" mentality that often goes along with it. It requires a realization that driving is a just something you do to get to a call as the majority of calls are not in the least time sensitive (should home health have CEVO?), and that our medical KNOWLEDGE is far more important than a few monkey skills.

Which is lost on the OP, not because he's dumb, rather I think the opposite of him because he's willing to ask questions. However he's new, and enamored with the system in which he works, which is certainly not an unusual condition.

 

[the_negro_puppy]

Please stop making threads

 

[JPINFV]

People never get better in an ambulance, their diseases and not cured, their injuries are not fixed, however, they are stabilized and safely and rapidly transported to a place were they do get health care.

Never get better? So the patient with depressed respiration due to opioids is not better following an appropriate does of naloxone? The patient in hypoglycemia who gets a dextrose injection is not better afterwards? The patient with a reactive airway disorder who gets Albuterol which eases their ability to breath is not better?

The hospital cures very few diseases or injuries. Many diseases are never cured, only managed. Plenty of other diseases and injuries only heal with time, often outside of the hospital, and often with medicine only assisting instead of doing the heavy work. I think you have a profound misunderstanding of what medicine is and where it occurs, and this is coloring your views on how EMS fits into the bigger picture.