Very annoying this volly EMT thing...

emtchick171 said:
I'm interested in knowing how volunteering can be counted "against" someone.
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Low workload and poor or nonexistant clinical support/ongoing continious praxis development modalities and infrastructure are two reasons that spring to mind
 
I know of at least one agency in NM that will not hire anyone who has volunteered in the surrounding area due to the reputation of those agencies. IIRC Medic417 has also said that he has heard of services who will put volunteers at the bottom of the stack depending on where they volunteered.
I can't say that I find it a bad decision on the agencies parts
 
from what I have seen

I vollie will have a crew chief, a driver and a tech.

A fourth can fit in as a trainee, that is how he or she gets experience.
 
I'm on a volunteer rescue squad, and we stay real busy. Me and my partner have a great reputation on the street with the 2 other companies that work here. Another crew on the same volunteer squad get laughed at constantly, and never get a patient. They run 3 or 4 on the ambulance. When rescue pulls up on scene, the other unit always wants to see if it's me or the "Clown Car".
 
DrParasite said:
4 as a requirement??? that's absurd.

As I told someone in another thread, if you have no experience, getting hired by a paid agency which will give you experience is next to impossible. don't kid yourself and think that you will be different than everyone that came before you.

Plenty of squad will allow you to get the experience, and not cancel shifts. In fact, if I was on a squad that did that, I would probably quit within a month and find a different squad that didn't have such a stupid rule.

IIRC, you are on Staten Island, where you squad jumps more calls than it actually gets dispatched to. So even if there is no crew on, there is an FDNY truck or a hospital based EMS truck still assigned to that area.

Cross the river my friend, plenty of EMS agencies (that will be busier than your SI vollie squad) that would gladly put you on a truck, without requiring 3 other people to keep you company.
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I have heard of people getting paid EMT jobs even in the tight NYC EMT market.

They either had:

1) a hook
2) ability to answer verbal questions about the protocols

And most people fell into #2

I also heard of EMT courses having instructors who make hiring decisions at a paid service offering a position to the person who got the highest mark in the class. There is one school that puts that carrot out on a stick.
 
emtchick171 said:
I know some professional services do not count "volunteer" time as experience, however I have never heard of it counting against someone.

Every agency around here does take volunteer work into consideration, whether or not they count it as experience...they will take the references from your volunteer chief/captain/supervisor, etc.

I'm interested in knowing how volunteering can be counted "against" someone.
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Some volunteer depts treat it like a real job. They handle themselves in a professional manner, train often, and hold their personnel to a high standard. Other places are more like a social club. There's a whole bunch of office politics and pissing matches, people picking and choosing what calls they go on, so on and so forth. For some, it's like a social event where they just come in for some Friday night fun, just for a goof. It's this inconsistentcy that presents the problem.

My old hospital asked for either six months professional 911 experience, or five years volunteer experience. A few of them were vollies themselves, so they know how to value volunteer experience on a resume. Did the person pull multiple tours every week on a consistent basis, or was their "years of experience" really just dropping in for a shift a month? Five years @ 16 hours a month isn't much at all.

So how does volunteer experience count against you for employment? In quite a few regions, the various vollie depts are very territorial. It's always a pissing match. What happens if the supervisor that makes the hiring decisions has vollie roots and dosesn't like your dept? Also, these "social club," no training, confrontational depts get a bad reputation, and so does anyone that comes from one.
 
46Young said:
Some volunteer depts treat it like a real job. They handle themselves in a professional manner, train often, and hold their personnel to a high standard. Other places are more like a social club. There's a whole bunch of office politics and pissing matches, people picking and choosing what calls they go on, so on and so forth. For some, it's like a social event where they just come in for some Friday night fun, just for a goof. It's this inconsistentcy that presents the problem.

My old hospital asked for either six months professional 911 experience, or five years volunteer experience. A few of them were vollies themselves, so they know how to value volunteer experience on a resume. Did the person pull multiple tours every week on a consistent basis, or was their "years of experience" really just dropping in for a shift a month? Five years @ 16 hours a month isn't much at all.

So how does volunteer experience count against you for employment? In quite a few regions, the various vollie depts are very territorial. It's always a pissing match. What happens if the supervisor that makes the hiring decisions has vollie roots and dosesn't like your dept? Also, these "social club," no training, confrontational depts get a bad reputation, and so does anyone that comes from one.
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Ahhh...true I see your point now. Thanks for the explanation. I guess I really didn't think about it that way because the service I volunteer for...you have mandatory nights you cover wreck calls & we are a paramedic level care service that runs EMS calls 24/7. We are always training and having QA meetings...and it is also mandatory that everyone is AT LEAST an EMT-B before they fill out an application to join our department.

- - it makes sense now that I look at it from a different stand-point.
 
46Young said:
My old hospital asked for either six months professional 911 experience, or five years volunteer experience. A few of them were vollies themselves, so they know how to value volunteer experience on a resume. Did the person pull multiple tours every week on a consistent basis, or was their "years of experience" really just dropping in for a shift a month? Five years @ 16 hours a month isn't much at all.
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The vollie department I started on required 36 hours a month, one night shift a week (or an equivalent day shift). in that 9 hour shift, you can get 6 calls, 2-3 of them of the ALS nature.

How different is it volunteering vs working as a per diem employee once a week?

If your volunteer agency runs like paid agency, it should not matter. The sad part is, not every volunteer agency is run professionally, and not every paid agency is run professionally either.

As for the whole "volunteer counts against you" well, most people started in this field as volunteers. I have heard of only one agency in NJ that might consider volunteer experience a downside. The reason for this is they want you to have your experience (esp urban EMS experience) before you work there. But they are definitely the rarity.
 
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