Salary

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looker

Forum Asst. Chief
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Salary is base on supply and demand. If tomorrow becomes shortage of EMT, you will see salary start going up until the point that shortage no longer exist. Until such thing happens, don't expect to see any higher salary as your skills do not worth much when you can easily be replaced. With auto cars coming soon, one day you might find that you no longer need a driver in the car and will result in you only getting minimum wage.
 
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Rialaigh

Forum Asst. Chief
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exodus said:
Around here, there's no way that's possible, we're too busy to even leave the rigs some days.
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Point being that is not the norm for EMS. If every service ran like this the pay would be much higher throughout the industry.
 
JPINFV

JPINFV

Gadfly
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looker said:
With auto cars coming soon, one day you might find that you no longer need a driver in the car and will result in you only getting minimum wage.
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You're still going to need two people to safely move the gurney (unless someone adds steer wheels like on hospital gurneys) and two people to move the patient too and from the gurney.
 
VFlutter

VFlutter

Flight Nurse
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CFal said:
Where's there motivation to get a degree when you are making the same as someone without?
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Personal improvement, more career options, graduate education.... It is not all about the money.

Physical Therapists just moved from a Masters to a Doctorate degree without an increase in average pay and there are still waiting lists for PT schools.

At the hospital where I work all new grad RNs start out at the same pay rate regardless of ADN or BSN. Did I waste my time since I make the same as someone without a Bachelors and 2 years less of schooling?
 
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troymclure

Forum Lieutenant
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i just left a job making 21.50/ph, 12hours a day minimum. $300/day. whether i got out of my rack or not, thats what i got paid. i also got paid depth pay up to $800/dive. my best day ever was $1300.(pre tax)

but the work environment was crap, i was on non paid on-call 24/7, when i was called it was generally with a 3 hour notice, and im 2 hours from the shop. i could work 1 day, or 45 days, no prior notice, etc...
also vacations and making any kind of plans was not going to happen.

tho i only worked 157 days last year, i was GONE for all of them, im hoping i can have more home time with this career, and also have more opportunity to go out and do stuff. if i can do that and make $20k a year ill be happy.
 
Arovetli

Arovetli

Forum Captain
439
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Lets not forget how profitable all this education is to the schools and to the government...

The complaints about pay should be compared to the overall job market prospects. With nearly half of college grads under or un employed, many professions struggling, a trend of college grads moving back in with their parents, furloughs....Its a terrible job market out there.
 
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46Young

Level 25 EMS Wizard
3,063
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Chase said:
Personal improvement, more career options, graduate education.... It is not all about the money.

Physical Therapists just moved from a Masters to a Doctorate degree without an increase in average pay and there are still waiting lists for PT schools.

At the hospital where I work all new grad RNs start out at the same pay rate regardless of ADN or BSN. Did I waste my time since I make the same as someone without a Bachelors and 2 years less of schooling?
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As far as personal improvement, that's debatable. The Gen-Eds may have some benefit, but outside of maybe a foreign language course as a humanities elective, nothing else outside of the core curriculum will make me a more effective paramedic.

I can definitely see the benefit for career options, but that's typically outside of EMS. The EMS AAS degree still won't hold any additional benefit over just a cert at your current EMS job.

For Physical Therapist, I don't know why they're going for a Doctorate. Is it possible that the field is expanding, and the additional coursework is needed to address advances in that field? Do they desire more autonomy, or to protect their interests from other medical professionals? IDK

Your choice to go with the BSN helps you in two ways - a career ladder is available to you, when it wouldn't be had you went with the Associates, and there's a trend for hospitals to either require, or give hiring preference to BSN's. That's different than EMS, where a valid cert and experience are king.

It seems that those wanting educational advancements in EMS are generally seeking scope of practice, pay, and versatility that mid-level practitioners have. Do you think anyone would go to school to become a PA or NP if it paid $12 - $15/hr? I certainly wouldn't. But that's what EMS education advocates say that we must do in order to raise our pay, scope, and relevance in the medical community. I'm certainly not going to school for four years to make $40,000/yr working 48-56 hours a week. I'm going to go to PA school instead. See how that works?

There's an upper limit to what paramedics could do, and should be able to do in the field. After a point, you're trying to overlap with other medical professions. I could see the Advance Care Paramedic advocates looking to muscle in on nursing with home care, wellness checks, compliance with discharge care plans for frequent fliers and such. But, that's nursing! Same thing for ER Techs wanting to run codes and push meds in an ED. That's what a PA or nurse can do, respectively. IFT is more appropriately done by nurses that specialize in a particular type of transport, and respiratory more appropriately handled by a RRT. It would be overreaching to have a Bachelors paramedic that can do every type of IFT without needing a nurse or RRT.

I'm seeing an increasing trend of students taking the paramedic program through a college, but not doing the degree, just the core curriculum. The ones that go back for the degree, like myself, are generally doing it because it will help for a promotion somewhere down the line, or because the additional classes will apply to another medical degree, such as nursing.
 
E

Ecgg

Forum Lieutenant
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46Young said:
As far as personal improvement, that's debatable. The Gen-Eds may have some benefit, but outside of maybe a foreign language course as a humanities elective, nothing else outside of the core curriculum will make me a more effective paramedic.
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Actually if go out of the community college range there is lots of classes that would make one more effective paramedic. I'd even say that would be much better than core curriculum.



I agree with the rest of the post.
 
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RustyShackleford

Forum Crew Member
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In some other countries, mostly commonwealth I find, salaries are on par with police, fire, RN etc. Then again in Canada etc we are taxed out the ***.
 
Arovetli

Arovetli

Forum Captain
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RustyShackleford said:
In some other countries, mostly commonwealth I find, salaries are on par with police, fire, RN etc. Then again in Canada etc we are taxed out the ***.
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True North, strong and free...
 
fortsmithman

fortsmithman

Forum Deputy Chief
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RustyShackleford said:
In some other countries, mostly commonwealth I find, salaries are on par with police, fire, RN etc. Then again in Canada etc we are taxed out the ***.
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All depends on the province or territory you are in. In the NWT, Nunavut Yukon and the northern parts of BC, AB SK, MB, ON, PQ and NF we have a lot of income tax deductions for just living in the north.
 
OhYasseen

OhYasseen

Forum Ride Along
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Right now I work in the television industry - I figured I'm destroying enough lives so I may as well become an EMT and save a life - and I'm on my way to studying to become an EMT (God willing) and when I learned what the pay is as an EMT I thought "I'm not going in it for the pay. I'm going in it for the life."

I don't mind it at all.

I can comfortably live on 40k/year in California. It's about the job. And, as I'm sure any EMT would agree with me, if you want to be an EMT and earn a lot of money, you're hearts probably not in the right place. And if you're already an EMT and the pay is what you came for, you'll probably quit sooner rather than later.

Personally, I know I won't mind it at all. like I said, It's the life I want.
 
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