danvtemt

Hi all. Been sandbagging this forum for awhile but not posting. This is a great site. I am an EMT-I in Vermont. I run with two squads, one in St. Albans and one in Enosburgh. Both of these are paid positions and I consider EMS to be my career. I've been reading the Rural EMS forum here and also other info I can gather on the web and at last I feel like I'm not completely isolated up here in the frozen north. My big frustration lies with the powers that be and the lack of interest from our MD, our district, and our state EMS office in making VT EMS more progressive. Seems to me that the more rural the service area, the more important it would be to have a higher level of ALS in pre-hospital care. Our district is allowed no higher than EMT-I, and it is a pretty low scope of practice compared to other Intermediate scopes around the country. OK, enough griping. I want to invite you to check out my blog. I write it about whatever comes to mind, but it is about EMS, rural VT EMS in particular. Its at www.wayoutems.blogspot.com. Thanks for being here, and have a safe day. Dan[web]http://www.wayoutems.blogspot.com[/web]

I work in an urban area of rural Vermont (if that makes any sense, urban being very relative here, our city, St. Albans has about 20,000 population, yet is in the top 7 or 8 largest urban areas in the state). I work for a private company, the only one in our district of seven EMS squads. Of the 6 municipal squads, only one is paid. Anyway, I make about 11$ an hour (EMT-I)and work a very odd schedule, some days I'm on 24, some days I'm on 10 or 11, and off days tend to fall in the middle of the week. We get time and a half for OT and there's always plenty available as we also cover 3 towns besides St. A. and do a fair number of transports between our small local hospital and the Level 1 Trauma Center in Burlington. It can be frustrating to see other professions making way more money with a lot less on the line (ie. someone's LIFE!), but even though my job pays the bills for the fam (not a hobby), it is also something I absolutely love doing. I love the bit about McDonald's paying just about as well with no vomit, ain't it the truth, huh? However, I worked for McDonald's in high school (years ago!) and I never got to save someone's life. I gave a lady a shot of Epi today (she was in anaphalactic shock) and as her airway opened and her skin changed from a purple-blue to pink, I realized I had saved a life...and no amount of Big Macs can equal that feeling! Good luck with your career whatever direction you decide to go! Dan