Becoming a Paramedic? Bad?

Tucanwarrior13

I've posted one or two threads here, and so far I have gotten nothing but great advice. I'm a sophmore college student, and I'm currently going to become a paramedic. I really like the idea of the job, but I have been told that A. the pay is bad. B. there is no opening for jobs beyond it C. no job security.

I feel like those are all completely untrue, because I have talked with a few paramedics in my area. I was thinking that after I get my paramedics licesence I could go back to become a Flight Nurse.

Am I completley off base with thinkning I will have a happy, and successful career as a paramedic?

Replies from nurses, EMTs, Paramedics, Doctors, and Flight Nurses are a bonus.

PeregrineFalcon

Source - Three friends are paramedics.

"You may meet someone having the worst day of their life. Sometimes it's also the last day of their life."

You'll have to be prepared for that, physically and emotionally, every day that you go in to work.

-Phil-

If possible I would suggest that you go straight for county of city Fire Rescue. The pay is pretty good and there is job security (mind you, this is in Florida).

Dunadan019

my friend was an EMT or paramedic i forget which... in college so ill tell you what i learned from him.

1. the shifts are either 12 or 24 hours long meaning you can't just work a few hours after class.

2. you will have to put your finger up some old persons butt at some time or another (with gloves)

3. most of your calls will be old people or false alarms

4. you can spend alot of the time doing your homework while waiting.

5. the pay is good (for college students) and it is good experience if you are looking for a career in medicine.


this is all second hand

Doxa

My sister became a paramedic. I am planning on becoming an intermediate EMT, but not a paramedic. Here's what I found out.

For paramedic the pay is okay, about 15/hour for ambulance services but there are some jobs in the private sector you can get more pay for. My sister works for a private company and gets 20/hour.

Its a dead end job. There is really no room for advancement at all.

I'm not sure about the job security part. In my area (Houston, TX) most EMS services are hiring most of the time.

I am choosing to just go for Intermediate EMT for a few reasons: a) only 17 hours of work for both basic and intermediate while paramedic is a lot more course work b)you get to do the fun stuff without the responsibility c) job to have while I go to university. It also will separate yourself from the pack when applying to med school or nursing school.

To figure out if its really what you want to do you can talk to your local EMS about doing a ride along. Pretty much you sign a waiver saying you will respect patients' privacy and a few other things and you go with to watch.

This will not go without saying that seeing someone dead or dying will be a scary first experience. Spoilerd for the weak stomached:

On my sister's second ride along she saw a 5 year old girl's head squashed by a cement truck.

It really got to her for a few days, but sometimes that's the shit you deal with seeing. They get use to it more and more though there's always a gruesome scene that comes now and then. Some times you deal with really stupid calls like a tween girl faking a seizure (for reals). You will also have to do some stuff that's really disgusting. Most of the time you will be taking stupid calls, or calls from old people.

My sister enjoys the work. She finds that it beats most of jobs that end up being way more monotonous. Its also a good conversation starter at parties long as you aren't tooting your horn too loudly. Though she does plan on moving on to a better career.

You will most likely be pulling 24 and 12 hour shifts. It can be really slow and you're just sitting around watching movies, and it can be call after call with very little rest. When you first get in the field you will be shat on by senior members. Eventually you will get some respect but don't expect it. Most paramedics have a morbid sense of humor to sorta deal with that kinda stuff. The biggest thing though is to not get jaded like many of the others that go into the field for extended amounts of time.

I think that covers most of it. If you have any direct questions I can relay it to the more experienced.

Smurph

If the $15/hour figure is true, then there are probably a lot of jobs that pay in that range that are much easier to get in to and deal with. I knew someone who was a flabotonist(sp?), which is basically just drawing blood from people at a hospital, and made like $15/hour.

rfalias

Smurph wrote: »

If the $15/hour figure is true, then there are probably a lot of jobs that pay in that range that are much easier to get in to and deal with. I knew someone who was a flabotonist(sp?), which is basically just drawing blood from people at a hospital, and made like $15/hour.

Phlebotomist

Jasconius

15 an hour? Really?

I worked with a guy who was going through the training for becoming a Paramedic. the requirements are different by state, but in Florida it was grueling.

Numerous hours of volunteer fire department service required without pay, multiple 24 hour shifts without pay - add to that all the coursework and still having to work a full time job to not be homeless. The guy I knew who did it was only working 10 hours a week and he was completely trashed by the end of it.

I say if you have your parents or a girlfriend behind you to support you, go for it, but you will kill yourself if you try to do it alone.

As far as the pay, I doubt it will be phenomenal - but if it is really only 15 an hour then I would probably avoid it. As someone said, there's jobs out there that pay that which force you to go through a lot less shit.

Fats

Smurph wrote: »

If the $15/hour figure is true, then there are probably a lot of jobs that pay in that range that are much easier to get in to and deal with.

Shit, if everyone had that mindset we'd have no medical personnel at all; not to mention teachers, soldiers, and a thousand other professions.

I'd say there is advancement, though maybe not directly. I got in to boost my med school apps. Others got their firefighting certs or went off to become nurses. If you want to be a flight nurse, it's not a bad way to do it.

I do think you're going about it the wrong way. Go find a volunteer fire department and join up. It's not a huge time commitment, you can keep going to school (what are you majoring in, anyway?). They'll get you your EMT-B cert and you can see what the job is like first hand.

EggyToast

Plus, many health care jobs are "dead end" on purpose; people in high stress situations for long periods of time typically start to care less about their work, leading to poor care and sloppiness. You don't want to be treated by the old, world-weary EMT with a fatalist world-view.

But jobs are about more than just pay. Pay is usually pretty low on the motivational list.

MedicMan

I'm posting under an Alt. I like to keep my job to myself and normally not talk about it when I'm just hanging out online.

I've been a Paramedic in Canada for 7 years, the last one working as a Field Training Officer working with college students to train them on the road as part of their 2 years of education to become Paramedics. This is some of what I tell them.

You will have some of the worst days of your life while at work. You will acquire memories that you want to burn from your brain. You will see things that no human should be exposed to. I know what people are thinking, they've seen a shit tonne of nasty things on the internet. That's true, visually, I've seen much worse things online then at work. But to be responsible for the things you're seeing, to be the sole medical authority on scene, to have police officers, firefighters and other Paramedics look to you to decide what to do. That's a whole different mind fuck. Then you have to live with the choices you've made, good or bad, for the rest of your life. What follows is one of the worst moments for me, one that I had read about, but I never though would happen to me. It isn't gross or disgusting, but none the less it is spoiler'd because I have only shared it with one person before.

At nearly 3 am one night at home, tossing and turning in bed, my wife (who is also a medic), asked me what was wrong. She knew the call I had done, one that doesn't need detailing now. I asked her to drive me back to the accident scene. She got up and dressed, knowing that I needed some sort of closure after what had happened. When we got there, the patients family had placed notes and flowers around a phone pole. An 8 year old that I had met a day earlier had drawn a picture with "I miss you Daddy" written under it. I broke down crying uncontrollably and sat on the curb with my wife. I thought about the little boy and her sister growing up without a father. I thought about the senseless stupidity that had resulted in his death. I thought about watching him take his last agonal breath and feeling his pulse stop with my fingers against his neck. Although nothing work could throw at me in 6 years had made me shed a single tear I could do nothing to hold them back now. My wife sat with me, held me, and cried as well. She knew what I was going through and that there was nothing she could do to make me feel better. I had to grieve so I could move on.

On other days you'll drive home with the biggest shit eating grin on your face, laughing because you get paid to do what you do. Assisting new mothers in the delivery of their children is possibly the greatest thing I've ever done. Doing the same at a gas station or in the back seat of a minivan in a hospital parking lot just makes it better. Excellent co-workers that let you spend the day laughing and joking (often at the expense of others) can make the hours fly by even when you're getting the shit kicked out of you by calls.

All the drama out of the way. The above is all very very rare. Don't think that every day will be that dramatic, but know that it is a possibility. Most of what we deal with is minor injuries and illnesses. Things that people could have gone to a walk-in clinic, or family doctor for. We see a lot of abuse of the 911 system. That is also in it's own way frustrating. We deal with the same political BS as most jobs, shake our heads at the decisions made by upper management. It's a job like any other, you need the right attitude to succeed.

Here the pay is excellent, around $35 an hour with amazing benefits but I know in the US EMT's and Paramedics get paid far less and are often expected to do more hours.

I would strongly suggest you contact your local EMS service to try to arrange a ride out with a crew. Although there is no way you can see what the job is truly like in one shift, you will get to talk to veterans and see what it's really going to be like and what it will take.

The books by Peter Canning and his blog are a great place to start too. I read his first book when I was a student, you can read his slow progression to being burnt out and how he recovered.

Einhander

I'm seriously considering it as a career. The main issue holding me back is a lack of money, but I hope to get that cleared up sometime next year.

From what I've heard from people in the industry, being a paramedic is not an obscenely lucrative career. The pay is shit compared to the amount of training you will go through (you could go to nursing school and hit RN in the same timeframe and make considerably more money). It may be extremely fulfilling and extremely stressful at the same time. You'll probably be exposed to gore on a regular basis, and you will have to make split second decisions that will determine whether someone lives or dies.

I've heard that due to the nursing shortage and budget cuts, hospitals will hire Paramedics to work in Emergency Rooms since they can be cheaper and more readily available than nurses.

I became interested after I dropped out of nursing school. The medical industry is so horrendously bloated and broken and I was disgusted by some of the practices that I saw, mainly as a result of the insurance and pharmacom industry. I still wanted to be involved in the medical field, but I don't have the finances or the time for med school. From my understanding, EMTs don't deal with insurance companies, they don't do ridiculous amounts of paperwork relating to bureaucratic bullshit. Let someone else deal with the billing and the product reps, I just want to help somebody.

Becoming a paramedic would be a hell of a lot more fulfilling than the majority of other jobs. There are different places you can take a Paramedic certification. You can work as a Tactical Paramedic and deploy with a SWAT Team, you can become a Flight Paramedic, you can work in Hollywood on movie sets, or you can work on the medical crew at a racetrack or oil rig or cruise ship, there are quite a few places you can go that don't involve just making runs through town.

Limp moose

I may caution you against becoming a flight nurse unless you get full disclosure about your pilots. If you work for a company that doesn't let you pick who you fly with or tell you much about them I would def not recommend it.

A large percentage of air crashes these days are air ambulance helicopters operating at night without proper pilot training or NVGs. (they fly into shit) Usually the ground doesn't just punish the crappy pilot alone...

Now obviously this is not the case everywhere Lots of those guys kick ass and are awesome pilots. I'm just saying its something to watch out for. You don't want to be flying with the new guy in the dark in crappy weather.

ceres

I thought about being an EMT for a little while. Fortunately I have a friend who does it for a living who could tell me the score. I searched for the email he sent me in response, and now I can't find it.

Question #1 that you have to ask yourself: Are you in peak physical condition?

If the answer is "not quite", the farther away from peak you are, the harder the job will be. We aren't talking about distance-running, we're talking about the constant bending over, being able get into tight spots, and lift. Oh how you must be able to lift. My friend said that to get his job he had to be able to lift 125 pounds off the floor and hold it for 30 seconds, because when that 300lb man falls down his stairs and his wife calls 911, it will be you and maybe one other person who has to get him out of the house and into the ambulance. I have a very bad back and did not make it past this point of consideration.

Note, that is for EMTs. I realize that paramedics have a different role, but if you are the first person on the scene it is not unreasonable to expect that you might need to move somebody, or some boxes or furniture to get to somebody, and that's wholly aside from images burned into your brain and the worst things you'll never want to see coupled with kinda crappy pay and terrible hours.

Good luck though. If you can handle it, the world needs more.

chaosbear

I was an EMT for six years and there has been some great advice so far in this thread. I'll just add my voice and say the following.

The pay is really not good for what you have to do so it really does have to be more than a job to you. The hours are long and can really wear you down. You will get blood, brains, feces, urine, vomit and a host of other substances on you, so it is not a job for the squeamish. There will be days where no matter what you do, you cannot save the person you are working on. Sometimes it will be an elderly person at a nursing home and that is okay but other times it will be a little girl that was hit by a drunk driver and no matter what you do you won't be able to save her or stabilize her enough to get her to the hospital and you still have to be strong and tell her it will be okay when you know it won't be and when you are there to hear the last words she will ever say, that situation can really haunt you, so you have to be able to leave the job at the job. You can't carry that stuff around or it will make your life miserable.

Having said all that, it was the most rewarding job I've ever had. You really are helping people and that just feels good. As far as advancement and job security go, it really depends on where you will be working. Some cities in budget crunches like to cut emergency services and when they do, you could see a reduction in hours or lose your job completely, so that is a concern. Other areas, including the one I worked in, are so short handed that you can work as much overtime as you wish. It just really depends. As for advancement, being a paramedic itself has little room for advancement but the skills and experience you have allow for other career progression. Many of my friends and co-workers used the EMT job to move into other jobs like the fire department or nursing. One of my friends even became a doctor and having that EMT experience on your resume really doesn't hurt your chances of getting into nursing school or med school.

Sorry for the wall of text and I know previous posts have put what I was trying to say more eloquently. The job is hard, it can be brutal and mentally draining but it can also be the most rewarding experience of your life. Whatever path you do choose, I wish you luck.

oldsak

My school had volunteer student EMT's on campus. Maybe you should find out if your school has something similar and try it.

ash thompson

I've never posted here but felt the need to respond to you after running into this during some research for a paper.
Im a firefighter in md and almost thru classes to take national registry for paramedic. Im an EMT-I. I love my job. I get offers all the time for areas that want to hire medics with a sign on bonus. A lot of paramedics that I work with have other jobs or businesses that they do on there days off and they make great money. I work " full time " with full benefits on a 24 hr on / 3 day off . That leaves time to make money some where else or spend time with the family.
Every day at work when I go on calls, I see people having a bad day. They are happy to see me and I help them. Then when I go home I see how blessed I am !
Its a great job from someone who has been doing it for 5 years. I hope I never burn out