How long should new hire's be watched?

[wrenEMT]

at my private service you have to ride for a minimum of 3- 12 hour shifts.. then after that if they are not competent.. we have a lil test for them to take, then you must do another set of 3-12 hour shifts, most of the time that's all we need since we are a basic only service right now. But even there, there are a few people that aren't as intelligent as a rock with moss growing on it. Some of them have still stuck around I don't know why and I have never gotten a straight answer from the higher ups but it's mainly because it's not hard to do transport and i don't argue. I do argue with those emergent runs that you actually need to use skills with, like a cardiac arrest or even difficulty breathing..

[jsadin]

With my first service (town fire/ems) I rode third for about a month (no specific agenda).

With A*R, I rode one 8hr shift third and then worked the 2nd 8hrs of my 16 as a full fledged employee (they didn't have anyone to cover the shift, so they cut my ride time by 32hrs).

With the service I work for now, there was no preception at all. I was friends with the director of operations at that time (former partner).

[Medic26]

I have worked for 5 services at the ALS level, all of them have a "minimum" amount of calls or hours. Sadly most of them are equal to about a 1 week internship.....which is way to short for a new provider. At my home service you must ride as a third person until you have been successfully "signed off" as competent provider. This system is currently being overhauled and I hope that when it is done the program will be a true work of excellence. But I won't be holding my breath too long waiting for it.

I'm not sure what an exceptable standardized approach would be, somewhere between 1-3 months of riding as a third person with FTO's who shape and mold you from a minimally trained technician to someone who is actually starting to get a clue. The hardest sell on this of course is the money aspect from managements point of view. :roll:

[firedoc5]

I live in the Southwestern part of Illinois (15-20 mins from downtown St Louis) and work for a private service that requires new hires do 3 sifts ride-a-long paid. )

Wow, we would have been close. I was in Jefferson Co./Mt. Vernon.

When I worked with a private agency there was not really a given time line. But I would say on average it was 4-6 months for Basics. But for Medics it was about 7-9 months. There were a few of us that lived at the ambulance building and of those we would also notice things when they were off duty as well. Not so much for hire/fire, but for kicks & giggles, making it look like we were though.