rimdup

Well it seems to me that this issue is on everyones minds. I've heard "education is the key" multiple times. I agree with what everyone says and would love to see a BS in Paramedicine sometime down the road. Now in comparison to Firefighters and Police officers, it sounds to me that most people think we should be a part of the health care field and not the public safefy field however still responding to 911 calls as a health care provider, part of the health care profession. Does that make since?? : ) So basically instead of being fire based EMS, maybe hospital based, and being a branch off of the hospital would lead to a more organized profession. My concern is fire and police 9 times out of 10 do not have a degree or earned a degree while working as a firefighter or police officer. So as trained Paramedics with most courses atleast 16-18 months long why can't we get the benefits and pay they do with out having a BS when they don't most of the time. (And yes, some police depts require a degree to get hired... before someone points that out)

We recently took morphine off of our trucks and replaced it with Fentanyl. The protocol states for ANY pn greater than 3/10 on pn scale. For Chest Pain we start with ASA, and NTG sl, 12 ekg with all other treatments/ hx in place. Alot of medics here will not give Fentanyl for chest pain for a few reasons, 1) In our city the nearest hospital is usually no longer than 10-15 minutes away, 2) some cardiologists don't like it because it masks pain (though the half life for Fentanly is only 30-60 minutes and morphine did the same thing but also releases histamine which causes a decrease in BP ontop of other things). 3) Old school medics don't like change and are stringent MSO4 fans. Just curious to see what other EMS services are doing.

When are we going to wake up as a profession? I am a NREMT-P and work for a Fire based EMS system in the midwest. We are second rate to the fire service unfortunately. We have EMT's and Medics leaving everyday to become firefighters because of pay and benefits. My question is "do you ever think we will be equal to police and fire in the future?" I understand EMS has only relatively been a profession since the late 60's early 70's where as Fire and Police can be traced back to the greek/roman times. But can it ever happen? Can equality ever be a reality instead of a fantasy.