EMS in Ireland

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12EMS12

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Hello all I'm currently an EMT of 2 and 1/2 years of experience, I m also almost done with paramedic school(i'll be done in May) I've worked for a busy IFT service, a busy private 911 service, and a hospital based service where we work in the ER if we are not on a call. I have a couple of questions regarding EMS in Ireland. Can an American Paramedic license transfer, or can one with one apply for reciprocity? How is the pay compared to other jobs? Are the jobs plentiful or very scarce? How long is a normal shift? How are the ambulances staffed, as in do you run two EMT's, EMT and Paramedic, 2 Paramedics, ect.... I'm also aware of the three license levels, what additional skills does the Advanced Paramedic perform? Sorry for all the questions but I am quite interested in the possibility of working in Ireland.
Thanks ahead of time if you are able to answer any of my questions!
 
Ireland EMS

Hi there. Pre-Hospital practitioners have 3 grades in Ireland - EMT, Paramedic & Advanced Paramedic. They roughly equate to - EMT-B, EMT-I & EMT-P in American terms. Of course there are some differences. If you go the the Pre-Hospital Emergency Care Council (PHECC) website you will find all the information you require on the EMS education, Guidelines etc. and it is the PHECC you will need to talk with about reciprocity as they are they licensing body for pre hospital care. On their website you will also see all the Clinical Practice Guideline, Medication Formulary, Skill level etc. They can be downloaded as PDF also.
Frontline EMS is run by the Dublin Fire Brigade in Dublin City and the National Ambulance Service in the rest of the country. (Northern Ireland have the Northern Ireland Ambulance Service, N.I.A.S)
The vehicles are mostly Mercedes Sprinter with box body and are staffed at a minimum of 2 Paramedic. 1 paramedic & 1 Advanced Paramedic is common also.
I hope this helps and I can answer anything else you want.
 
Shifts are generally 12 hours long and we do 13 of them over a 4 week period, although 8-10 hour shifts are still in some areas of the country but they are being phased out. Pay wise, well, do you know of any EMS that pays well? Lol. Getting employment should not be difficult as the private companies always take on staff, however, they do not do frontline duties and most people use them as a stop over until they get into a frontline service. Hope all this helps.
 
It does thanks. How hard is it to get onto one of the frontline services?
 
You'll have to wait on a recruitment campaign. I'm not sure how often they come up.
 
12EMS12 said:
It does thanks. How hard is it to get onto one of the frontline services?
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In short, quite hard! as said above the frontline (911) services are run by two public services, they only recruited recently and may not recruit again for another year or 4.

Work with the privates is very hit and miss, depends more so who you know then what you know. An American paramedic skill set matches our advance paramedic skill set, but our national ems regulator (pheccit.ie) views reciprocity on a case by case basis for each overseas applicant, i would go so far to say if your course was less then 2 years incl internship on the road they may only recognise you as an irish paramedic.

An irish paramedic is not what everyone knows to be a paramedic. they are somewhere between an emt-b and an emt-i. the training is only 270 hours class room, a few weeks supervised placement on an ambulance and in the e.d, theater then a year long internship working on the road with a week long phtls(also known as btls) course and driver training course thrown into the mix.

if you want anymore detailed info don't hesitate to ask, im in Ireland and know the system quite personally.
 
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You said that the frontline services are run by two services- can you post any information on them? Do they post recruitment information online?

Thanks for the information!
 
Ciara510 said:
You said that the frontline services are run by two services- can you post any information on them? Do they post recruitment information online?

Thanks for the information!
Click to expand...
Yeah no problem, this is unique to Dublin, the capital.
We have a national ambulance service that is run by the Health Service Executive (public body responsible for all areas of healthcare) so if your the furthest south or at the most northern tip of the republic you will have the same service respond to emergency calls, in the same uniform with the same equipment(for the most part) The staff are all on the same pay scales and are all part of the same unions (there are 2 or 3 big unions that they typically join)

In Dublin, in addition to the HSE National Ambulance Service, we have the Dublin Fire Brigade. Who also operate an ambulance service for Dublin city and county, but they are duel role fire-medic's (for example they may work 1 shift per week on the ambulance and the rest of the fire truck) but they only operate an emergency service, while the HSE do IFT work and non emergent calls.

Because all 911 work (we use the number 999 or 112) is run by the public services all employment opportunities are advertised on www.publicjobs.ie
With Ireland being so small, they may only hire every couple of years, so employment is highly competitive with thousands applying for only 50-200 places every few years.

If you need any more in depth information i know both services pretty well
 
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