Hey, looking to join this community (first post)

[Tom Winter]

Hey EMT's and Paramedics,

My name is Tom. I am looking for direction in life. I want to help people, and I want to get a job. I'm a healthy young man with a degree in Music, and I play exciting gigs on the weekends and holidays and deal with lots of interesting people and situations.

So I'm planning to go get my EMT certification, I think at the bare minimum, the skills learned would make it worthwhile. But I thought I would stop by and do some research for real-life EMT's and paramedics, and see how their jobs are.
I can see myself working on an ambulance, getting dispatched to crisis situations, and being "on call." But is that really what the job is, I am trying to figure out. Are some places of employment less adventurous?

Please tell your story! Or help me find the right thread for this... thanks so much.
I feel like this is a great line of work for my personality. But I am looking for help understanding what the job really looks like from different perspectives of people in the field... and thought the forums would be the best place to go to get started. Thanks again!
Tom

 

[NomadicMedic]

Hi Tom. Welcome. Read lots of posts here. The job is fairly well explained in many.

The actual "life saving" is a rare occasion, most of the job is routine transports and trying to overcome boredom.

I'm simplifying a bit... But it's more about being a reliable, compassionate person than being a "save the world hero".

 

[BOS 101]

I only ever worked on a BLS ambulance, and as you can imagine it was less than exhilarating. It was good for practicing assessments and just getting used to patients in general, in DEmedic's line of thought, it can be good practice for learning how to deal with the scenes and be kind to the patients. Once in a blue moon you get something interesting and you can use your skills as long as you stay practiced.
Currently i work in an ER, which is a nice option the EMT's have (although difficult to get into in most places i hear) to get something different if you arent feeling the ambo. Working in the ER however is similar in many ways (well at least in this non-trauma center), most patients come in for less than actual emergencies, the others you will get to do ekg's, splints and Iv's on, assuming that the ER you go to lets techs do so, but not much else exciting most of the time. Depending on your luck however, the ED can become hectic and full of critical Pt's. You get to do some fun things, moreso than on a BLS rig, and a very nice side is that you get to see the doctors and nurses at work and pick their brains. Well as long as they like you.

 

[StCEMT]

I am still working my way up the food chain, so my day is less exciting, but here is my summary. Get to work, clean truck etc. hospital transport, hospital transport, hospital transport, city 911 having been throwing up since last night, hospital transport, hospital transport, rinse wash repeat x 14 +- hours. IFT is not a glorious life, sometimes it kind of sucks, but it is a good way to get comfortable just working with people. On the bright side, I get to see a lot of cute nurses.

Now on my medic student side of things, its not often a crisis situation if you are wanting a bunch of that. Most of the patients that come my way are either not really needing the ambulance or have a good reason to call but aren't the huge trauma or cardiac arrest people envision when they think about EMS. So this semester I have done 108 hours of field clinicals and had 34 patients. Out of those, 4 stand out (2 bad car accidents which had them flown out, cardiac arrest, and heroin OD) as being a little more on the "they really need help now" side of things and two of those died. I've also had the foot pain, low impact car accidents where the pt was fine, throwing up and wanted to get checked out, panic attack/hyperventilating and got scared, the conspiracy theorist, etc.

Like DE said, you will practice the reliability and compassion skills more often than the life saving type skills.

 

[Tom Winter]

Thanks guys. These replies are very helpful! I'll keep browsing the forums later today like you suggested.

It's good to know what the job is actually like before making a big investment of time and $ into pursuing education!

 

[Gurby]

Hi Tom, I think I'm you 5 years from now:

I did my undergrad in music, taught lessons and freelanced for a while. I wasn't good enough to have the music career I wanted, got kind of tired of teaching lessons. Figured that becoming a paramedic would be cool, and also work well because I could work one 24-hour shift per week, do a couple gigs, and call it a living.

So far, it seems to have been a good plan, and it would have worked out nicely. But somewhere along the way I kind of lost the spark for music and decided I wanted to go to medical school, so now I'm pursuing that.

You have nothing to lose from getting an EMT-B certification, aside from around $1000 and 160 hours of your time. I would certainly encourage you to sign up, take the class, get a job, see what it's like for yourself. Depending on what area of the country you're in, it can be difficult to get hired part time as an EMT-B with no previous experience, but not impossible.

Be aware that as an EMT-B, you will most likely be doing mainly IFT's (inter-facility transports), ie driving grandma to dialysis. If you want to do the sort of things you probably picture EMT's doing, you may need to become a paramedic which is a much bigger commitment of time and money. But one step at a time - become an EMT, see if you like it, see if you think becoming a paramedic is something you'd like.

Call up local ambulance companies and tell them you're interesting in becoming an EMT - they may let you ride along for a day and see what it's like. Also, I remember watching this TV series when I was considering getting into EMS: