LA County Enough is enough!!

San Bernardino County runs things very well compared to the rest of socal.
 
JPINFV said:
Don't like how your company is being run and don't want to leave? Get into a management or leadership position and start effecting change.

Don't like how the county or state is being run? Start working with officials at those levels. Contact the LEMSA and see when the committe meetings are and find out if you can attend.

Don't like the education standards? Start getting involved with education both at the educator level and at a political level. Get connected.

There's always the option of becoming a paramedic (since there are scope of practice complaints involved), RN, or physician and become involved at the government/medical director level.

Crying "Woe is me," however, is not an option.
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This.

10char
 
It's all about supply and demand. As noted many times before, we're talking an over-saturated market, therefore the companies, big and small, have no worries when it comes to filling spots.

That's called power.

Change can only come through raising standards.

You can wait for someone to raise the standards around you or you can raise your own standards.

Based on experience, Union organizing, especially in a world populated by transients, is an exercise in futility.
 
Fish said:
That too, and I hear they receive proper pay
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They recieve the same pay as Riverside county. Pretty much the exact same protocols.
 
Honestly, IFT shouldn't really be handled by EMS. It should be more like a medical transport companies. With CPR certified attendants who can help patients administer oxygen. I mean :censored::censored::censored::censored:, a good deal of companies don't even carry AEDs. How can you call yourself EMS without an AED.

Once the IFT is stopped from being mislabeled as EMS, then super excited EMTs will stop being let down by their new super cool saving the world job.
 
SanDiegoEmt7 said:
Honestly, IFT shouldn't really be handled by EMS. It should be more like a medical transport companies. With CPR certified attendants who can help patients administer oxygen. I mean :censored::censored::censored::censored:, a good deal of companies don't even carry AEDs. How can you call yourself EMS without an AED.

Once the IFT is stopped from being mislabeled as EMS, then super excited EMTs will stop being let down by their new super cool saving the world job.
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True, we did not have AEDs at the BLS IFT company I worked for.
 
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SanDiegoEmt7 said:
Honestly, IFT shouldn't really be handled by EMS. It should be more like a medical transport companies. With CPR certified attendants who can help patients administer oxygen. I mean :censored::censored::censored::censored:, a good deal of companies don't even carry AEDs. How can you call yourself EMS without an AED.

Once the IFT is stopped from being mislabeled as EMS, then super excited EMTs will stop being let down by their new super cool saving the world job.
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I can't believe there are still places that allow ambulances to operate without AEDs. Or I guess I can believe it, but it's just saddening. Even if all you do is IFT it seems like it would be quite embarrassing to be flagged down for an arrest and have to tell everyone that why yes we are an ambulance but no, we do not have an AED.

I would also agree that ideally IFT and EMS would become separate entities. At the very least it would be great to see some sort of "IFT operations" and disease pathology taught in basic classes. A solid 90% of my IFT duties were learned on the job--everything from paperwork to patient movement. I wonder though if anyone would want to take an "IFT class" if they knew what the job was like.
 
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Wan more pay? Staff and equip to use a real 12 lead and defibrillator.
 
firetender said:
It's all about supply and demand. As noted many times before, we're talking an over-saturated market, therefore the companies, big and small, have no worries when it comes to filling spots.

That's called power.

Change can only come through raising standards.

You can wait for someone to raise the standards around you or you can raise your own standards.
Based on experience, Union organizing, especially in a world populated by transients, is an exercise in futility.
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I've raised my own standards but sadly that has not resulted in me being paid anymore money, though it has raised my job satisfaction, which is indeed worthwhile.
 
46Young said:
@ the OP, if you were to quit tomorrow, how many applicants would there be to take your place? This is why your working conditions are poor.
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with all due respect, in YOUR job, if you quit tomorrow, how many applicants would be there to take your place? I bet you have at least 10 applicants for every one position, and if you quit tomorrow, your spot could be filled by the weekend (assuming all the background check and all the testing was completed).
SanDiegoEmt7 said:
Honestly, IFT shouldn't really be handled by EMS. It should be more like a medical transport companies. With CPR certified attendants who can help patients administer oxygen. I mean :censored::censored::censored::censored:, a good deal of companies don't even carry AEDs. How can you call yourself EMS without an AED.

Once the IFT is stopped from being mislabeled as EMS, then super excited EMTs will stop being let down by their new super cool saving the world job.
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except for the nursing home 911 contracts, where the patient needs to go to the hospital, but they don't want to call 911 so they call the IFT company instead.

but I agree, 99% of the IFT calls can be handled by a CPR attendant who can help administer oxygen, and can move the patient from the gurney to a bed.

also remember, most private companies are looking to make money, not pay their employees well, especially when the employees are replaceable. places that aren't focused solely on profit tend to pay much much better ($31 an hour for a per diem medic, 18 an hour for an EMT where I work).
 
AMR Ventura County is a career division. Dual Medics, excellent county to work in, very good pay, excellent relationship with Ventura County Fire, and going on a 10+yr 911 contract.

Worth looking into, but VERY tough to get on.
 
SanDiegoEmt7 said:
Honestly, IFT shouldn't really be handled by EMS. It should be more like a medical transport companies. With CPR certified attendants who can help patients administer oxygen. I mean :censored::censored::censored::censored:, a good deal of companies don't even carry AEDs. How can you call yourself EMS without an AED.

Once the IFT is stopped from being mislabeled as EMS, then super excited EMTs will stop being let down by their new super cool saving the world job.
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I blame California for not only not requiring AEDs on ambulances, but in addition requiring companies that want to place AEDs on ambulances to go through a special process to become "authorized AED providers." So if I run a company that hasn't had a patient need an AED in the past year and the state is going to require me to jump through additional hoops to place AEDs on my ambulances, why would I do that?
 
IrightI said:
AMR Ventura County is a career division. Dual Medics, excellent county to work in, very good pay, excellent relationship with Ventura County Fire, and going on a 10+yr 911 contract.

Worth looking into, but VERY tough to get on.
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honestly, amr is a great place to work. i absolutely love working there. there are a lot of long termers that are in our division and they still seem to like it and they dont talk a bunch of trash about the company. i dont know how long we have had our 911 contract but its as long as i can remember they run 911. fire treats us like people on their team and the pay is decent. plus being able to transfer to just about any state you want to go to is nice too
 
I think a lot of the reason that LA County EMTs do not get respect is because fire runs all the ALS there. The private ambulance is seen simply as transportation to the hospital while the fire medics do the patient care. With that set up and the enormous egos that the fire department down there has, it is no wonder why even if the fire department is cool with their ambulance company they will never see them on the same level.

However, I think that it is incorrect to classify all of California as a backwards and inefficient EMS system. Central California does EMS much better than their better known and more flashy counterparts to the south and the north.

Some counties such as Kern County, Madera County, Kings County and Fresno County have BLS fire departments and ALS ambulance providers. Fire and EMS work well together and there is a lot of mutual respect between the two because the two roles are clearly defined. Fire does an excellent job of BLS first response; but once the ambulance shows up on scene, they take a step back but are good at assisting the ambulance crew. The paramedic scope of practice is bigger and there is no "mother may I" system. With transport times exceeding an hour in some areas (East Kern/Ridgecrest/Kern River Valley) paramedics get to be paramedics. In addition, there is no radio/phone reception in vast areas of those counties so paramedics can not even call the base hospital in many cases and paramedics must operate off standing orders and protocols on everything up to and including to bilateral chest decompression and needle crics and any other ALS procedures that are almost unheard of in LA County.

Even counties such as Tulare, Ventura, Santa Barbara, and San Luis Obisbo, which do have some fire department ALS first response, recognize that the paramedic ambulance has priority patient care and the fire department is there to assist only and not run the show. Those areas also have good EMS systems, and less restrictive protocols. I do not personally know anyone working in San Bernardino County but I hear they have a good system too with AMR providing ALS ambulances.

In conclusion, while Southern California (LA/OC/San Diego) does have a messed up EMS system, it annoys me when people just assume that all EMS in California is messed up. There are still some lesser known counties that do it right.
 
CentralCalEMT said:
In conclusion, while Southern California (LA/OC/San Diego) does have a messed up EMS system, it annoys me when people just assume that all EMS in California is messed up. There are still some lesser known counties that do it right.
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You mean there's parts of California besides OC/LA/SD and the desert on the way out to Vegas?
 
Wow, that was a really good first post and I agree with not all of California is screwed up.
 
I do not know how true this is but I've been talking to a couple of LA city fire guys over the last couple weeks who told me that AMR and the city of Los Angeles have been holding preliminary discussions about an ALS takeover. Basically AMR would replace fire in LA. Apparently AMR has shown them how much money they would save if they made the switch. Anyone who has seen fire called to a convalescent home in LA sees how much waste there is usually. I have seen over 6 fire guys just stand around while 2-3 other guys do actual work. It's pretty ridiculous how much money is wasted on that kind of stuff. Anyways, has anyone else heard rumblings of this?
 
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