Because I'm not in paramedic school, my experience as an EMT is moot? I won't apologize for actually having standards in a field that want's to be a profession, but any time any decision not completely spelled out via procedure and protocol goes running to a supervisor or on-line medical control in order to "limit liability." Similarly, how can it be a "profession" if a significant number of technicians refuse to go to the source documents that are easily available. Sorry, "My manager didn't tell me about that" isn't an appropriate excuse when a quick look through your local EMS authority (be it state, local, regional, etc) will generally give access to a primary document that could be read, learned, and if need be printed out for later reference. What's sad is the fact that this sort of self-imposed ignorance is accepted and, to a point, encouraged both by the people who are supposed to be leading the trade (including the educators) as well as the culture of the field providers.
A perfect example of the above regarding liability is the out-of-state still alarm thread. It's amazing the number of people who would rather let someone die than expose them to a minuscule level of liability (not nearly close to the amount of liability exposed to by twiddling their fingers on scene) or expects someone else, anyone else as long as they take on the "liability," to be able to order them to do something technically illegal. Never mind the fact that no EMS authority in their right mind would make a stink out of that.