How much should EMS make?

[Summit]

And again, I have no interest in arguing about whether BSNs improve patient care outcomes. The advent of the BSN has positively affected nursing wages and that is what is germane to this discussion. Not to be callous, but I don't particularly care if it improves care. It got them the wages they deserve.

I think it definitely matters. Wages increased some, enough to offset 1-1.5 years of extra school tuition and non-earning time?

 

[VFlutter]

I don't equate success with how much money one makes. I agree that paramedics makes averages wages in below average working conditions

By successful, I mean they have performed as paramedics, saving lives, raising the dead, shocking people,giving medications, you name it, they have did it. They have done the job for years before there was a push for paramedics without any college education. What has changed about the job that now requires a paramedic to have a bachelors degree? and is that change enough to say that a 10 year paramedic is no longer qualified to be a paramedic until they get said degree?

Or are you saying that EMS should require bachelors degrees, and the money that previously wasn't used will just magically appear?

If that is the argument then paramedics do not need advanced formal education and thus they are currently getting paid exactly what they deserve; skilled labor wages since they are technicians and not clinicians. Glad we solved this debate.


As stated before. All other medical professions which increase educational requirements did so well before wages increased. Doctoral PT/PT are typically still making the same as Masters prepared. It's a slow process without instant gratification and unfortunately early adopters may get little personal benefit for an overall improvement in the profession.

 

[VentMonkey]

So as a non-degreed paramedic with over a decade as a paramedic alone I can kind see both sides of this “educational coin”.

Do I think a bachelors in paramedicine will create a market of qualified providers? Inevitably, yes. Do I think EMT-B needs to be abolished? Yes, and again, mandate AEMT as a two-year program and watch the market change drastically from what it is now, to what it will eventually become...a profession.

I don’t see it happening in my careers lifetime. I go back and forth on a bachelors degree myself. Currently all of the bachelors degrees that I have looked into lead to management, and/ or education. Neither of which I have any interest in.

I’m a firm believer in having to have complete and total interest in something in order to excel. I’m weird that way I suppose.

Short of a critical care-driven bachelors (think New Zealand’s MICP degree) I can’t see me pouring time, and efforts into a Biology major. I truly have no desire to do anything else in the healthcare industry.

Having given myself every prehospital opportunity afforded to me through an employer who realized my potential, and overall desire to master all corners of my craft, I am at the point of total content with my chosen career-path. No (collective) gripes here. It can’t get any easier, or more enjoyable to me.

With that, as far as wages go~ I think all of the opportunities that I have taken advantage of, coupled with my clinical competence have put me in a place financially to, also, not gripe much.

It’s also afforded me a decent retirement savings, and a chance at completely walking away from this career field and into another should I so choose to do so.

I don’t see myself so much as an outlier anymore. I think I was simply self-motivated enough and sacrificed enough over my decade and a half to be put in this predicament. I don’t think it will be this way forever, as more and more of my generation age, retire, move on, etc.

The barriers will, or at least need to, eventually increase. Otherwise, much like @VFlutter mentions, it will flounder. The craft itself is lost on more than it isn’t because of a false notion we have built over decades upon decades. A false notion without proper backing, be it formal education, unions, or any other fallbacks.

Currently as it stands now, we get what we deserve on the whole. We also get what we put in. No gripes, put in what you want yielded.

Presently that seems to be more and more up and coming providers needing to pursue higher (formal) education.

 

[Tigger]

I think it definitely matters. Wages increased some, enough to offset 1-1.5 years of extra school tuition and non-earning time?

I am not sure what that calculus looks like. I guess the point I am trying to make is that even if advent of widespread BSNs didn't greatly improve outcomes, it did improve wages, so I am not sure how germane patient outcomes are to this discussion. I don't think most folks are willing to go to back to school soley to improve patient outcomes, they want a personal return as well.

 

[Summit]

I am not sure what that calculus looks like. I guess the point I am trying to make is that even if advent of widespread BSNs didn't greatly improve outcomes, it did improve wages, so I am not sure how germane patient outcomes are to this discussion. I don't think most folks are willing to go to back to school soley to improve patient outcomes, they want a personal return as well.

Employers are willing to pay for improved patient outcomes if it gives the market or reimbursement edge.