rettungsfachpersonal

Thank you all for your answers. Most professions (even barber) here take 3 years of education, so i think as somebody who serve humans (and for humans life) 3 years is necessary - not possible for volunteers. Education for Physicians takes minimum 6 years... But i think the EMS in Germany is difficult comparable with the EMS in the USA.

First of all i have to apologize if my spelling is not the best. I am astonished to see this discussion also on a US-Forum. In Germany we have the same emotional discussion all over the years and until now nobody has the real answer. We have many volunteers in our EMS, in some counties we have volunteer first responders in every village and in my EMS (like many others) we also have volunteers on the ALS-Units. On weekends our ALS-Units are often staffed with one paid Paramedic an one volunteer EMT. As a paid Paramedic you sometimes think they want to have "Adventure EMS" and sometimes you're right. But we also have a lot of professional volunteer buddies who i don't want to miss. But in some opinions (like mine) in Germany the volunteering had hampered the evolution in EMS. For example, presently we have only a 2-year education to become a Paramedic because to enable this level to volunteers. In the near future we will have a 3-year education at last. Many people think working in EMS is easy because there are so many volunteers whose full-time job is trader, baker, mechanic or something else and on weekend they are life-saver on an ALS. So we do not have that standing like a Paramedic in the US.