Masters degree in EMS: An old idea rehashed

[Carlos Danger]

Wow, that's a lot of assumptions you've made about me.

I mean, are you seriously saying that back injuries aren't a problem in our line of work?

I didn't make a single assumption about you, nor did I say back injuries weren't a risk.

What I said was "I might get a back injury some day, therefore I'm not going to invest any more time or money into my education" is very poor reasoning. And frankly I don't know why you would even stay in a line of work that you feel is so risky.

 

[Carlos Danger]

Back to the original point.....

A graduate degree is great for someone who wants to work in upper level management in any field. However, one can't ignore the economics: grad school is expensive, and if it isn't going to (at the very least) pay for itself in a reasonable amount of time, it is hard to justify financially.

As for a master's degree being required, al la "paramedic practitioner" or something like that......I think we are a very long way from that happening on a large scale. I suppose I wouldn't be too surprised to see something like a pre-hospital PA role developed and utilized somewhere, but I don't see that being widespread for some time, if ever. And it would make far more sense to simply use the PA educational and licensure structure that already exists, rather than develop whole new educational paradigm.

The demand for relatively low-skilled "ALS techs" to shuttle people around is growing, and it simply doesn't require a lot of high-level understanding.

For right now let's just focus on making an associate's degree with college-level A&P a requirement, and then go from there.

 

[BoonDoc]

grad school is expensive, and if it isn't going to (at the very least) pay for itself in a reasonable amount of time, it is hard to justify financially. .

That is not the case here in the UK. The full masters degree is only £6110. There is no masters degree in the US that can come close to that tuition price. Plus you don't have to have any college prior to taking this degree.

It is not expensive. It will pay for itself if you are looking to move to management, academia or private business sector.


I also would like to see the paramedic profession advance like it has here in the EU. Perhaps starting with just the associates degree would be an option. It will be hugely difficult to change the culture of EMS in the US. Take a look at the longview. In 20 years the US will still not have a paramedic profession based on academic excellence. Every other country will have long adopted the academic paramedic. US will be left in the dust.

Academia is the way forward. It has been proved in every other healthcare profession. Why is EMS so willing to stay in the limelight?

 

[Aprz]

But how is this paramedic with a Master's going to afford his loan payment of >$1000 / month while making $14/hr and being treated like crap by his employer? S/He is going to leave EMS for a hospital job where s/he can practice at the full level of his/her training and not risk a career ending back injury.

For example, if we were to require masters' degrees to be a paramedic how long do you think you would keep those people, before they realize they could find something better than 16 hour overnights sleeping on a street corner assigned by a SSM computer.

The idea is that our scope, pay, and respect will increase with higher educational requirements. The supply would supposedly decrease and quality of the provider, scope, pay, and respect would increase.

Many jobs have their own risks or cons. Sleep and risking your back are some of the inherited cons of EMS. I imagine some physicians don't get a lot of sleep and experience a lot of stress too, yet people still seem to become physicians.

The transport isn't always 20 minutes. That's kinda exclusive to urban areas. Also I think the goal may be eventually for paramedics to treat at scene and release, and also community paramedicine.

Something has to change in order for everything else to change. I think it's funny that people pretend that one thing will change (eg pay or educational requirement), and nothing else is gonna change.

 

[ILemt]

I argue against fire based ems all the time. Primarily because many fire departments are extremely political ,excluding qualified people to hire a friends son instead. Further many Fire departments have age caps (no one hired if they are older than X)
or else they hire veterans to the near exclusion of all others, or they simply do not appeal to someone who wants to work EMS but has a fear of burning buildings.

To me, ideally, an ems service would be a sworn government operation either locally or county based and having parity and pay equal to law enforcement and fire.
I would argue for EMT programs to become a year long certificate program, and for medics to have an AS or AAS. Managers can get a BS while Chiefs and researxhers obtain an MS.

The thought of a prehospital midlevel excites me, but at $11/hr as a street medic I could barely pay for my AAS and can't afford grad school.