Newbie with questions.........

[Dsmittty911]

If your head is in the right spot when you roll on call you will be too busy to notice the blood and gore. If you take time to notice then your patient is not getting all of the attention they should be getting. There are a lot of things about working EMS that can gross you out but you will learn ways to deal with it and keep telling yourself that even after seeing all of that and patient survives then you're really doing something awesome. Keep your eyes on the end result you hope to accompolish not what you have to wade through to get there. Good Luck

[fanbuffett]

I am from Georgia and we don't really have basics. as an EMT-I i am considered as basic but allowed to do a few more things than the basic scope of practice allows,which is nice i feel it gets me closer to some of the stuff a paramedic gets to do and i can help him do more things.

the pay sucks starting around 25K a year around here. i do it more for the satisfaction than anything i work many hours to help pay the bills. some of them are great and some of them are long. really don't have many dislikes except the time away from my wife and son.

Keep up at it if you have a passion for it it will be worth it if you don't find something else. there is a better way to make a living than ems but i am not sure there is on that i would enjoy more

[Dustdevil]

If you could tell me one thing you have learned in the course of your career that would help me starting mine, would you share it with me?

EMS is a job, not a lifestyle. Do not get caught up in EMS 24/7. Keep it in perspective, just like you would if you were a librarian. Leave all that for the firemonkeys. Don't run out and spend a month's salary on EMT t-shirts, stickers for your car, trauma bags, stethoscopes, and copies of every ambulance movie ever made. Normal people in other professions don't do that. You shouldn't either. If you immerse yourself into this job as if it were a lifestyle, it will eat you up like a cancer. Your only concern with EMS when you are off duty should be education and getting to work on time the next day.

How much do EMT-I make in your area?Less than $10/hr. That seems to be almost universal in middle America, except in California and the Northeast, where the cost of living is outrageous.

What do you love most about your job?Satisfaction. It's what I do best, so I go home knowing I accomplished something.

What do you dislike about your job?The people and the politics. The profession is overpopulated by uneducated, unprofessional idiots who think EMS is a lifestyle and not a job. Maybe one out of a hundred people in this field are people I would choose to work for me. And the political bureaucracy of EMS -- both local and nationwide -- prevent the field from ever progressing into a respectable profession.

What was your schooling like?Like Rid, it's almost irrelevant to anybody today since it began before you were born. But EMT school was one month of eight hour days, five days a week in a military hospital. Paramedic school was three months of eight hour days, followed by three months of clinicals and field internship. Yeah, it sucked. Only through the desire and determination to improve myself through further education did I ever become a decent medic.

What were you 1st days as an EMT like?Like SC98, I couldn't get enough of it. I was a kid and it was all about the adrenaline and the siren. I didn't want to leave the station at the end of the shift. Luckily, I outgrew that pretty quickly. And anybody who doesn't should be evaluated for psychological issues. The excitement overrode the nervousness. Like most people right out of school, I thought I knew everything. I thought the pretty new patch actually meant I knew something. Truth is, it doesn't. So hopefully you will be nervous as hell. Nervous enough to know that until the day you retire, you should be devoting a couple hours a day to studying.

As for the EMT-I thing, it's hard to comment without having any idea whatsoever where you are. (I know people are touchy about personal info online, but sheesh... nobody knows who you are. It wouldn't hurt to tell us what state you are in!) Almost all issues in EMS are very local. Things in one state may be very different from the next state over. And, EMT-I's are a lot more popular in rural areas than urban and suburban areas where paramedics are usually the standard. So, you may indeed be in an area where paramedics are not the standard and the use of EMT-I's is prevalent. I would be relatively confident that your instructor knows the job market for your area, and would be inclined to trust his judgment in that respect.

Another issue that is local is certification levels. Your state may or may not subscribe to the National Registry (NR) system, and that makes a big difference in how your schools are structured. In most states, you must be an EMT first. But some states do indeed educate directly to the I level, usually in heavily rural states. And again, I think your instructor is probably familiar enough with your state's bureaucratic structure and job market to know what is needed for entry level success.

Regardless, I think the idea of educating people directly to the I level as the entry level is excellent, so long as it is done in a quality fashion, and not just knocked out in a few months like most EMT schools.

[WannaBEMT]

Dust-

Thank you for your reply and good information, I will remember that. BTW, I am in Georgia, I thought I put that on here but I guess not

Jenn