If you want to stay on the ambulance and stay running 911 calls then being a paramedic would be the better option as there aren’t many nurses running 911 calls on an ambulance. Nurses are really only used in CCT and HEMS.
Now if you were looking at which one is probably a better overall career path with more room for growth, better pay, etc then the answer would be nurse.
Generally, I think this is a very accurate answer. While you might find a few places where there are PHRN's, those are (overall) going to be reasonably rare in the US.
As a Paramedic, you're pretty much at a terminal point in your advancement. You could do some CCT or HEMS type work, but you're going to be relatively limited in your ability to advance as a care provider without leaving Paramedic. As an RN, you're going to be trained as a generalist and will specialize on the job, but because your initial training is reasonably general, you can change to different areas of medicine and still be a nurse. Some of my ED colleagues have gone into infection control or have transitioned to PACU, for instance. One of my current colleagues works in a Peds ED for another hospital. Yet another works as an in-house float nurse and can float between ICU and the ED.
Bottom line is that if you want
options for a career path, nursing is a great way to go. I did Paramedic and RN both in the "traditional" way. I became a Paramedic about 20 years ago and about 10 years ago, I started down the RN path. Had I known from the outset that I would end up being an RN, I would have gone that path instead of Paramedic and then after becoming an RN and getting some experience, I might have challenged the Paramedic license and obtained my Paramedic that way. Frankly, had I gone that route, I'd now be an RN of nearly 20 years instead of about 7 years. I definitely do maintain my medic license and may yet step back onto the bus in a PRN role, but for now, I've got too much stuff on my plate over the next 6 months or so to worry much about that, not the least of which is renewing my MICN cert and my Paramedic cert this year. At least I can apply
most of my Paramedic cert stuff to MICN renewal as both certs require "prehospital" CE.