Balboa Ambulance - San Diego

[Essent]

You're a lifesaver, Caliboosted!

 

[Eeyore]

Why skills? So that they can see if you can handle a stressful situation. You may be doing IFTs, however, if a patient goes critical or codes on you... Are you gonna panic and spin or do some business? It may lead to the company being sued for hiring a dumbass that let a patient die, without doing something. Do you wanna be the :censored::censored::censored::censored::censored::censored::censored: that shows up to dialysis with a dead body? Because, you were too busy Facebooking?

Couldn't be any truer. I've seen tons of EMTs come through and think all they do is dialysis and IFT. People like that are the exact reason no one respects EMT's.

 

[Zerbo]

Any idea what the starting EMT pay is for pacific or balboa ? Or the shift length ?

I'm currently a FTO for Balboa. Up until very recently we were hiring at $10 an hour, but just two weeks ago we had some company "restructuring" that resulted in frontline supervisors being laid off and the loss of our training supervisor and Heartland liaison. That said, new hires are currently being paid $8.75/hour. Our schedule is four 10-hour shifts a week, with at least one weekend shift mandatory. As far as I'm aware, that makes Balboa the lowest-paying company in the county for new EMTs.

However, if money is not your primary concern, Balboa is an excellent place to get experience to move on to a higher-profile company or to medic school. We get a relatively high call volume (average is 6-7 calls per shift), and a good mix of appointments, discharges, dialysis, and emergency response that can give you a wide range of experience.

It's not my intention to disparage my own company, nor to try to make it seem like a gleaming beacon of BLS standards. However, I can say that I've enjoyed working there for the past year and continue to enjoy it despite the typical ups and downs that are more or less standard to the entire BLS industry.

Whatever you decide, welcome to the field, regardless of what company's shirt you end up wearing : )

 

[Essent]

Hey Zerbo,
I just got hired there and have done two days of training so far.. I wonder if you're my FTO

The company is great so far, I have had cool partners who are showing me the ropes.. the pay is just enough to pay for gas to drive myself out there, but it's all means to an end.