# Traveling paramedic?



## BayEMTmaybeP (Aug 30, 2018)

hi everyone, 

Was reaching out to see if travel assignment company’s existed (like RNs) for paramedics?


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## bigbaldguy (Aug 30, 2018)

Not that I'm aware of. Sadly there is a glut of paramedics most places. Some remote locations will recruit experienced medics though. They offer incentives for relocating.


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## DrParasite (Aug 31, 2018)

bigbaldguy said:


> Not that I'm aware of. Sadly there is a glut of paramedics most places. Some remote locations will recruit experienced medics though. They offer incentives for relocating.


Where is this?  many/most agencies in NC and SC are always hurting for paramedics....  especially experienced and competent ones


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## VFlutter (Aug 31, 2018)

One of the big reasons for the abundance of travel nursing was the adoption of Compact States and the ease of working in multiple states under one license. Unfortunately for most Paramedics it would involve obtaining a state license for each state which is a logistical hassle.


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## cruiseforever (Aug 31, 2018)

DrParasite said:


> Where is this?  many/most agencies in NC and SC are always hurting for paramedics....  especially experienced and competent ones



The same is true for Minnesota.  Many placed have good starting wages and I believe if you have your National you would be good to go.


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## Woodtownemt (Aug 31, 2018)

Years ago I worked with a few medics and EMTs that did something like what you seek. I'm not sure if it was a one off thing or common practice but I knew of some guys who traveled quite a bit with in the AMR network. 

From what I recall they would pretty much go to any AMR operation that was short staff and work for short period of time. They would do this in addition to their Disaster Response Teams. Keep in mind this was almost 10 years ago.


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## bigbaldguy (Aug 31, 2018)

DrParasite said:


> Where is this?  many/most agencies in NC and SC are always hurting for paramedics....  especially experienced and competent ones



When I was looking into it most of the offers for paid moves and incentives were for Alaska. Was maybe 6 years ago. Decided I was too old to play that game though. Would have been fun in my 20s though.

To clarify these were options I found were for straight out of school medics. For a medic with a few years under their belt or special training/skills there might be recruitment options in less "exciting" locals.


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## Phillyrube (Sep 17, 2018)

Cruise ships, some Military Sealift Command ships had a position called Ship's Nurse, paramedic with live medical control via satcom.


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## NomadicMedic (Sep 18, 2018)

Replica should ease some of the licensing issues as it gains traction .

There are areas all across the country that are in desperate need of paramedics. If there were a staffing agency that could provide trained medics for contract locum tenens assignments, it would be a huge help.


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## DrParasite (Sep 18, 2018)

NomadicMedic said:


> There are areas all across the country that are in desperate need of paramedics. If there were a staffing agency that could provide trained medics for contract locum tenens assignments, it would be a huge help.


The biggest issue I see with this is the credentialing process. our county's FTEP process is between 3 and 6 months (and up to a year for newbies), until you are a completely released paramedic.  And there are plenty of experienced paramedics who don't make it through the process.  As the old saying goes, if you have seen one agency, you have seen one agency.....

Assuming it takes at least 3 months for an agency to deem a paramedic as competent, knowledgeable of the local protocols, and able to function within their EMS system, operating under the medical directors license (and I think 3 months might be a conservative number), who will pay for the medic's time?  The agency?  the staffing company?  Last I checked, professional staffing companies are typically more expensive (dollarwise) to the company than hiring in house; that's why you are paying them to do all the staffing services.


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## akflightmedic (Sep 18, 2018)

If only there were an organized, standardized governing body trying to ensure everyone had the same base foundation along with same continuing ed requirements across the board regardless of which state you lived in...if only. If this were to exist and everyone "buy into" and support the concept, then we could easily facilitate movement across varying states, filling needs, etc. You know, kind of like what the nurses did...why reinvent the wheel? They established a model and it works! But it requires education, more education and then some extra education.

I have managed to travel here and there in times of disaster and back fill rosters. Example after I did relief work for Katrina, Acadian hired me as a "temp employee" since so many of their staff were displaced as well. I did a 3 day orientation even then and was cut loose however they ensured I was with FT employees who would keep me out of trouble. It was great though financially, VERY hard physically/psychologically cause I was there to work. I slept in the stations, even when "off duty". I did make a ton of cash though. Doing what I did is extreme and not easy cause you have to adapt and assimilate fast. At that time, I had 9 different state Paramedic licenses active.

So to answer your question, it is possible to be a "travel Medic", however it is near impossible to do it regularly, reliably or count on as a source of income. The times you can do it are also usually during times of disaster, such as now on the east coast. If you go to Indeed.com and enter "Hurricane Relief" Paramedic, several staffing agencies will pop up. Whether or not they have actual contracts is for you to decide as many agencies plus up before and during a storm to then try and sell their services.


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## Summit (Sep 18, 2018)

DrParasite said:


> Assuming it takes at least 3 months for an agency to deem a paramedic as competent, knowledgeable of the local protocols, and able to function within their EMS system, operating under the medical directors license (and I think 3 months might be a conservative number)



Travel RNs, MDs, PAs, NPs usually have 3 month (13 week) contracts and spend 1-3 weeks of that onboarding/orienting.

If paramedics can't onboard a contractor in that time, it is a system problem (by which I mean the EMS educational/regulatory system as much as I mean that individual agency's "we do this special thing this special way" syndrome).


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## NomadicMedic (Sep 18, 2018)

Too many agencies make on boarding overly complex. For experienced medics that are working a short contract, it should be a fast, intense process.


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## DrParasite (Sep 18, 2018)

akflightmedic said:


> I have managed to travel here and there in times of disaster and back fill rosters. Example after I did relief work for Katrina, Acadian hired me as a "temp employee" since so many of their staff were displaced as well. I did a 3 day orientation even then and was cut loose however they ensured I was with FT employees who would keep me out of trouble. It was great though financially, VERY hard physically/psychologically cause I was there to work. I slept in the stations, even when "off duty". I did make a ton of cash though. Doing what I did is extreme and not easy cause you have to adapt and assimilate fast. At that time, I had 9 different state Paramedic licenses active.


that sounds awesome, especially the making lots of money for a short time assignment.  I wish i could do that, it sounds like an awesome way to make a ton of money and not have to work part time.

But you were assigned to a FT employee to "keep you out of trouble" so were you more of a warm body with a paramedic patch, or an actual provider?  I don't mean to be insulting, but whenever I worked with a new per diem, I know as the full timer, if something happened, it would fall on me.  I also knew that if we had a bad call, I'd be calling the shots.  I've worked with quite a few "warm body" coworkers; on paper, they met all the qualifications for employment, because they had a pulse and a patch, but if we had a sick patient, I was in trouble.

BTW, I don't doubt your competence as a medic, nor your experience, and I'm pretty sure you weren't going to kill a patient, however after seeing how two different crews can handle the same patient, and document it completely differently, yet both claim to be doing exactly what SOPs say and the boss's expect of them, I question how oriented were our people to the agency standard, and how some of our per diem employees didn't get as much orientation as they probably should.


NomadicMedic said:


> Too many agencies make on boarding overly complex. For experienced medics that are working a short contract, it should be a fast, intense process.


I agree with you in theory; however, and this might be a new thread altogether, with the trend among several of my local agencies moving toward a more extended onboarding process for all employees (4-6 week academy, formal several month long field training evaluation program, etc), why should an experienced provider traveling provider only need to deal with a fast, intense process?   shouldn't that work for all experienced providers?

from a traveling provider perspective, a PA, NP and MD usually have more flexibility (as allied health providers) because they are working under their own license, and as a result, can do what they want (provided they follow the site's local guidelines), compared to a paramedic, who is under the medical director's license, and protocols and policies (both clinically and operationally) can vary state to state, county to county, town to town, and even agency to agency..  I'm not sure how nurses work, but I have heard good things and bad things about traveling nurses (from both the traveling nurse and the people who have worked with traveling nurses).  I also wonder how much differences there are for nurses standing orders and acceptable practices from facility to facility.


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## akflightmedic (Sep 18, 2018)

FT Employee as in I had an EMT partner who had been with the company for a few years and knew the area, knew the facilities, knew all the nuances I would learn as I went. Not keeping me out of trouble in patient care aspect...but operationally.


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## greenmountains (Mar 14, 2019)

I do not know exactly what you mean by traveling, but if you mean interstate than I would think licensing would inhibit this There are companies that try to find med techs work long distance but I do not know if they do medics. Alaska has a great deal of jobs for rural (VERY rural!) paramedics that fly into remote areas to treat areas as a practitioner.


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## FutureFlight (Jul 9, 2019)

bigbaldguy said:


> When I was looking into it most of the offers for paid moves and incentives were for Alaska. Was maybe 6 years ago. Decided I was too old to play that game though. Would have been fun in my 20s though.
> 
> To clarify these were options I found were for straight out of school medics. For a medic with a few years under their belt or special training/skills there might be recruitment options in less "exciting" locals.


What agencies in AK are recruiting medics?


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