What about them? The people who go on with their education don't constitute the majority of those in EMS. The overwhelming number are EMT's who work for private ambulance companies who tend to work for a few years until they figure out that they could be making more money doing something else.
I'm not putting down anyone or their efforts at becoming better at what they do, just stating some pretty obvious facts about the state of EMS today.
When those in the profession, industry, trade, whatever you want to call it, start demanding better education, more licensing, fewer guaranteed to pass schools, then it will become a profession worthy of the name.
One need only look at nursing and respiratory therapy for 2 solid examples of how a trade can become elevated to a profession. Those of you who are younger don't know what it was like just a relatively short period of time ago, anyone other than an MD were treated like crap in the medical field. Only when nurses and their unions took it upon themselves to elevate their education and training did their profession rise, along with their wages. Same thing happened to RT's and is slowly happening in other fields of medicine. Same thing MIGHT happen in EMS.
John E.
