a recommended solution
A simple analogy:
In the Marine Corps for example, Marines can become qualified in single or multiple skills, just like in most careers. E.g. A Marine who successfully completes jump/airborne school receives an additional MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) and gets to wear "jump wings" on his uniform. Another Marine who successfully completes dive/SCUBA school receives a different MOS and gets to wear a "dive bubble", etc. A Marine who completes both jump and dive schools receives yet a different MOS upon completion of the second school. This we call "dual cool". The Marines who go through these schools do it not only because their jobs require most of them to do so, but because they get paid extra once they're certified.
Plus, there's the extra prestige of wearing cool stuff on your uniform
This obviously occurs in the other branches of service, and in many other career fields. I know for a fact that a year or two ago, at least one of the counties in California was hiring dual certified FF/EMS personnel. I looked at the job details, and the pay looked GOOD-- not six figures or anything, but enough to make an old(er) Marine like me think more about switching job fields.
I didn't switch to get a raise. I switched for a CHANGE. If I was thinking strictly about money, I would've stayed on active duty (long enough to retire soon) and I'd still be making much more than what our poor NYC EMTs, Paramedics, FFs, sanitation workers, and cops are making.
Below are some figures I got from FDNY's site at
http://nyc.gov/html/fdny/html/general/mission.shtml .
According to FDNY's site, in FY 2003, FDNY had "892,017 Fire Apparatus responses to 432,969 fires, non fire emergencies and medical calls" and "1,267,340 EMS Unit responses to 1,088,378 medical emergencies". At the time, there were "10,725 Uniformed Firefighters and Fire Officers" and
"2,740 EMTs and Paramedics".
What were the rest of the 10,725 Uniformed Firefighters and Fire Officers doing while the FFs were responding to the 432,969 fires et al? Why couldn't they have been assisting the greatly outnumbered 2,740 EMTs and Paramedics in their vastly higher number of 1,088,378 calls? Because they don't GET PAID to do so.
Forgive my ignorance-- I'm new to all this EMS stuff. This has most likely been brought up before, but I recommend that we encourage FDNY FFs to cross train into EMS, and that we encourage more EMS personnel to cross train into FF. How? Once dual certified, we give them a desirable raise. Now, instead of having an EMS shortage, we can hopefully bump up the numbers to gradually solve the shortage problem. Then as FDNY attrition occurs from the normal retirements, deaths, people quitting, etc., we can downsize the department to a smaller number of dual certified, and the remaining (but less paid) singly certified, personnel. Kill two birds with one stone.
I don't claim to have invented this solution. As you know, this is already going on in many areas as we type and read these posts. (Now I just started another flame war over the "keep FF personnel separate from EMS" vs. the "combine FF with EMS into one person" debate.) What are your thoughts, as I doze off from lack of sleep?