MD to paramedic

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Mcikc3

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Good morning all,
I graduated from medical school and entered general surgery residency. Long story short, I became more and more burnt out to the point that I left residency. I saw surgeons spending less and less time with patients (and their own families) and more and more time with administrative BS.
anyway, great field but wasn’t for me. I’ve been on a strange path since and currently teaching anatomy and physiology for a nursing program.
I miss the thrill of caring for sick and critical patients and am considering becoming an EMT or paramedic.
This idea is brand new and I’d love to hear if anyone makes this type of transition. Can I test out of any aspects of certification? Has anyone been in my position? How do you all find the lifestyle and work/life balance? Thanks in advance!
 
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Rockin2climb

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Mcikc3 said:
Good morning all,
I graduated from medical school and entered general surgery residency. Long story short, I became more and more burnt out to the point that I left residency. I saw surgeons spending less and less time with patients (and their own families) and more and more time with administrative BS.
anyway, great field but wasn’t for me. I’ve been on a strange path since and currently teaching anatomy and physiology for a nursing program.
I miss the thrill of caring for sick and critical patients and am considering becoming an EMT or paramedic.
This idea is brand new and I’d love to hear if anyone makes this type of transition. Can I test out of any aspects of certification? Has anyone been in my position? How do you all find the lifestyle and work/life balance? Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...
I know quite a bit of people that do it the other way around, they start off as an EMT or Paramedic and then go to Med school or PA school to become a provider. Our current Medical Director used to be a EMT before he went to Medical School. After spending a bunch of years working in Emergency Medicine, he transitioned to the EMS administration side of things and now writes all of our systems protocols and even has his own response vehicle to respond to calls in the field where he can help us out on more technical/higher acuity calls/ (I've even been told that he has the capability to perform field amputations if it came down to needing to do that). And sometimes he will even show up to lower acuity calls just to help lift a patient or help on scene. The cool thing is when he shows up on scene, most times he doesn't take over the scene rather asks what he can do to help.

My Dad is another example of this. Following undergraduate school, he received his EMT and then Paramedic license and got hired onto Chicago Fire Department working as a paramedic. After about a year, he realized that CFD wasn't the right place for him and he moved to one of the Chicago suburbs to start a career with that FD. During his first 4 years on that department, he went to Optometry School where he graduated from and became an eye doctor. He continued to work the next 27 years full time on that suburban fire department as a firefighter/paramedic eventually becoming a Lieutenant all while continuing to work part time as an eye doctor.

But I agree with the above person, why didn't you just switch residency specialities?
 
E tank

E tank

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Another thing to think about would be explaining to an employer/county certification body how you expect to transition from surgeon to a paramedic, ie. how do you intend to stay in your lane as a medic or might you be tempted to be a doctor in certain situations? Once you've been through medical school, a year of internship and some time as a surgical resident, It's not as if all that just goes away. There are practicing docs (can't imagine there are a lot) that do both but it wouldn't surprise me if they had a special relationship with their local EMS authority.

Either way, you'll have a lot of 'splainin' to do...
 
PotatoMedic

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M

Monday

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That would I guess depend entirely on systems.

Where I'm at (east Europe) there are paramedics, nurses, and licensed doctors on car quite regularly - either generic MD or specialized, mostly in critical care & medicine of disasters, anesthesiology, or respiratory.

Not so many surgeons but the other specs are rather common crew here.
 
DrParasite

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Akulahawk

Akulahawk

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I suspect that if you're at a point where you could still change to a different/shorter specialty, you very possibly might not have to become licensed/certified as a Paramedic in order to do field work. You'd have to look into it but there's a possibility that you might be able to work in EMS under your own license... but you'd need to have a valid license to practice medicine. If you do NOT have a license to practice medicine, you might have difficulty challenging the Paramedic license from an administrative side of things. I earned my Paramedic license the traditional way and then earned my RN license the traditional way. I'm currently an ED RN and though I haven't been in the field as a medic in years, I still maintain my Paramedic license. One of the problems that I know I'd encounter is that I know the hospitals will want certain things done (like having a saline lock) after the patient is placed in a bed, yet the system protocols specifically disallow IV SL placement unless the treatment protocol requires vascular access. I'd be tempted to place that saline lock as that's what I'd do in the ED... And that's just the beginning.

I would have to be very careful of role confusion while working in the field as a Paramedic or in the ED as an RN, or for that matter, holding a wall with a prehospital patient in an ED (especially if it was my own ED at the time).
 
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