the step children

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supergirl534

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This is for all the people who are in volenteer fire departments. I am an EMT in NY and I wanted to put this up to see what everyone else thinks. Maybe to prove that Im not carzy.lol

Within my volenteer organization we do a minimum of 95% of EMS calls, other 5% being fire and maybe out of that 5% of the fire calls maybe there are 3 working fires all year. The short version is the EMS members work hard day and night.

Even though I am a part of a "fire department" there are so many other members who refuse to realize that the reality of things is, is that EMS is the biggest part of our organization.

There are no EMS officers and the people that they have appionted EMS training staff dont seem to put together any hands on drills. I will say that get great at getting speachers to come and talk to us. In my department there is no where for EMS to advance in my organization unless I go to fire.

Is there anyone else who has to deal with this and do you have any suggestions for me to try to "take over" EMS at my department?
 
I'm curious as to what you mean advance?

My Fire/Rescue department is probably about 85% medical calls the rest fire. We do however have a EMS officer that writes up our protocols. We do have fire and training every month.

Does your department have monthly meetings or anything? I would try and bring this up there.
 
when I sat advance I mean there is no way to become and officer. There are meetings but when anything is brought up about EMS issues or sugesstions it is pushed to the side. This is were my frustrations come from. I ahve alot of passion for what I do and to be honest it sucks that I cant go any further in the ranks when I know that I can help out my department and the way that EMS is ran. As of right now most of the time its a cluster depending on the call. We really only have fire training and CME training other than that I think we had a total of 20 EMS traing hours.
 
20 ems hours for the whole year?

Do you know who your medical director is maybe you could go to them about it.
 
Can you please not post in pink? The combination of powder blue background and electric pink makes your posts not very easy to read and even more difficult to concentrate upon.
 
No need to be sorry. I just wanted to make sure you got the most input for your thread. :)
 
The sad truth is, most Fire Departments that do EMS should really be renamed as EMS Departments that do fire. EMS is what most of their calls consist of, and it has the whole 80/20 rule. 80% of the call volume, 20% of the budget. 80% of the work, but only 20% of time is spent practicing/training for EMS. The even more ironic part is most people are more likely to save a life in EMS than they are in a fire, but everyone still considers firefighters to be the lifesavers.

Try speaking to your chief. or even better, write up a written proposal for an EMS dep chief, EMS captain, and EMS Lt. give him the advantages of having an EMS chain of command. having QA officers, training officers, and someone to handle EMS issues that arise can be advantageous to a fire officer that wants nothing to do with EMS.

or you can just get used to fact that in 99% of Fire Departments in the US that do EMS, EMS is treated like the :censored::censored::censored::censored::censored::censored::censored: step child, a means to gain more funding and run numbers, but something to only actually spend time on when you actually have to.
 
I'm glad my dept is that 1% we spend a decent amount on training supplies, ems equipment, and classes every year, because we know more often then not when the pager goes off it's medical.

I don't see why other depts have such a hard time recognizing this. Maybe I'm just spoiled where I am lol
 
I see you're on LI. In Suffolk County there are about 100 EMS agencies, some of which aren't FDs. Have you looked into an EMS-only agency, such as Huntington or Shirley?
 
mgr22 said:
I see you're on LI. In Suffolk County there are about 100 EMS agencies, some of which aren't FDs. Have you looked into an EMS-only agency, such as Huntington or Shirley?
Click to expand...

Depends on what end of the County she's in...Don't forget CIHVA, Port Jeff Ambulance, SBVAC (Especially if you're a student @ Stony Brook), then there's South Country, Medford (which is odd in the sense they have a full blown Fire Department without a bus).

Mind if I ask OP what dept you ride with? You can take it to PM if you don't want it in the open; I'm just curious. It's nice to see others from the "631"...
 
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