Just Plain Ruff

Patience Grasshopper. If they take longer than a few days you might want to be concerned but just be patient. I'm sure it will all work out. It it takes a week or longer, that might be a different story. It took 6 weeks for me to get my last full time gig, the waiting SUCKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! but then again it wasn't in EMS.

Stolen from some website about whackers. Anybody who works LE, Fire or EMS is probably familiar with the term Whacker. We all know one or two and usually they are harmless if not embarrassing to be associated with. What's a Whacker you ask. It varies depending on who you ask. To cops a Whacker AKA "Holster sniffer, Badge Bunny, Baton Polisher" can be a mall cop who takes himself way too seriously. Or he could be a creepy old guy in a retired CVPI he bought at auction outfitted with amber deck lights, antennas, scanners, radios, LE supporter plates and anything else he can do to make himself look like a cop despite having never actually been one. Although he probably tested and failed the physical or psych eval at every local agency at some point or another. There's the Storm Chaser/Weather Alert Whackers too. These are the guys who jump in their vehicles (often equipped similar to the Holster Sniffer) at the first rain drop and provide their local weather service with up to the second updates on what they secretly hope is imminent doom. They have a knack for finding and reporting tornados that nobody else ever sees. We have one of these guys locally who is a bit of a legend but more on him later. You have the SAR Whackers too but they are rather rare. Now we move onto the most common of Whackers. The Volunteer Firefighter/EMS Whacker. Anybody who has ever spent time on or around a volunteer Fire/EMS company will instantly think of at least one person they know who fits the description. Somebody posted a list at the station the other day titled "How to spot a Whacker" Sadly it was torn down rather quickly by no doubt one of our POC guys who thought it hit a little too close to home (we are a combo department). I will share what I remember from it here though as it was some funny and true stuff. You made it a point to buy a red truck. Your POV has more LED lights than all the apparatus combined. Your POV has so many antennas it kills overflying birds with RF radiation. Your POV is plastered with stickers, memorial plates, and anything else you can put on it to identify you as a firefighter/EMT. You have multiple pagers on your belt because you're on multiple depts so you never miss a call. You're always the first on every seen because you spend all day next to a scanner so you don't miss a thing. You put a $2,000 light bar on a $500 car. You don't own a t shirt that does not say something about the wearer being a firefighter. You do all your clothes shopping at Galls. You spend more time at the station than the full time guys. Your wife fake dialed 911 just to spend time with you. You bought you're own hydrant/spanner wrench/s. You bought your own badge because your dept does not issue them to POC firefighters. There was more but that's all I remember. Sadly while highly devoted the Whacker is often the most useless person on scene and their behavior is embarrassing to everybody on their dept. Below is a good example of a Whacker's POV. Note it has more blue lights than KMart, it's red and has multiple firefighter decals. Three sure signs of Whackerdom. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqLIBb2Yh_M Did you guys know that there is a Whacker Technologies? They make EMS/Police/Fire Light bars. I do not lie. www.whackerusa.com

You know, you haven't been very clear in this post. You said that your class A's required badges yet now you say you don't have to wear it and you will probably put it in your glove compartment. My advice, since you are 14 and you should NOT be responding on your own. Plus wouldn't your Law Enforcement members know it if you responded and pulled your medical bags or bunker gear out of your car. Honestly your cops have better things to worry about than someone showing up at a scene impersonating a EMS or fire fighter. I'm sure that's at the bottom of their list of things to worry about. If you show up with the equipment they are going to expect that you are who you say you are. One honest question, do you have that big of a problem in your area with people impersonating EMS/Firefighters that badges are necessary? If you do, then your system, In Dustdevil's lingo - SUCKs.

You put yourself at huge risk when you put on a badge. Honest question, who's idea was it to put a badge on your uniform? Is the one who decided that you had to put a badge on, was he a cop in a former life? I think it's a stupid idea for any EMS crew to have to wear a badge. Especially in this current charged climate where people are fighting and killing LEO's. If just puts a UNNECESARY target on your crews. I would be fighting tooth and nail to not wear a badge. If any of your crews get assaulted or worse, the blame should lie on the guy who forced you to wear the badge. I've worked in many areas and not a single one of those areas had EMS wearing badges. NOW CAVEAT - a badge on your uniform during a funeral or some other significant event where you are representing your department I am not against, but on duty taking care of patients - NO Way Jose'

I've worked with partners of all persuasions and as long as they treated their patients well, didn't force their LGBT views on me, I did not force my hetero on them/ I was always accepting of their life/current partner and I expected the same The only problem was when on partner was so confrontational and thought that every thing that she was bring criticized on was based on her being a lesbian then the problems began. as a matter of fact, no-one would work with her because anything and everything that we did or said was always turned around to be a criticism or her being a lesbian. It finally came down to a couple of crew members taking her off into the garage and having a sit down with her. They told her that her vehement views on her always being critcised was NOT because she was a lesbian and because she was just someone who was very hard to get along with, she finally got the hint that it wasn't that she wasn't wanted there becuase she was a lesbian but because she was such a toxic person all around. She finally quit and we never heard from her again

And the twitter universe is abuzz with people in support of this scumbag who ambushed these officers. They say that the officers deserved it because of all the unarmed people who have been killed by police in the past year. Very very sad. One protest in NY even had the protestors shouting "death to cops" which they got exactly what they chanted. What would the public do if the police went on a one day strike? I kind of see this possibly happening one day in the future And the animosity of the police department versus the mayor. It's getting pretty bad out there.

Yeah, Doc, most of the time the lady only needs a place to lie down and come around. We have treated her if her seizures didn't resolve but rarely were we required to intervene. She always made it clear that she didn't want treatment, that her seizures would resolve and they always did without issue. It worked out in her favor 99 percent of the time. I don't think we ever considered a EMTALA aspect Doc, not ever. Maybe we probably should have but I don't work there anymore so I don't really have anything invested in it anymore.

actually, I'm the only one who is right, no matter what the answer I give,I'm always right. Now put that in your BBQ grill and smoke it.

We had a cleaning staff member who had seizures every day. She even wore a bike helmet while working so when she went down she didn't hurt her head. She was a cleaner at the hosptial I worked at. When she had a seizure, the person who found her would put her in a wheelchair, wheel her to the ER, put her in a bed if available, or if she was on a patient floor they would take her to the closest room with a bed and a nurse on the floor would then come into the room she was in and would watch her. That was her care plan. No medical care was needed for her other than a bed to let her ride out her seizure and then when she was done, she would get up, go back to work and maybe later in the day have another seizure. Easy peasy. Her care plan was set up with Admin, her doctor and the nursing staff on board. I never while working on the ambulance had to go get her, seems her care plan extended outside the employment area as well. That is an example of a well working care plan.

Ok, I'll say it - I CRY BULLSHIT. Let's see your card - make a copy of the card, then black out your name and your cert number and scan it in and post it here. I don't believe a word you are saying. Prove me and everyone else here wrong. Otherwise, stop trying to fool us as we weren't born yesterday.

good to see you here Chris but please do NOT use Chicago Fire as a ruler to guage what EMS is in this country. Chicago fire only shows you the glory and exciting calls and leaves out a lot of the mundane and slow portions of EMS here in the US. In one episode of Chicago fire the medics may have calls 5 types of patients that many of us in EMS might never even see in a career. And even in Chicago many of their medics haven't seen all of these types of patients. But what you will see in US EMS is patient transfers of patients who all you are doing is being a taxi service to take them from the nursing home to a hospital and back. You will also see the run of the mill pediatric medical calls, geriatric falls, minor car wrecks because someone says their neck hurts, the 3 am call that got you out of your bed just so you can transport the 30 year old who has a back ache and can't wait till he can call his doctor. You will also see the very exciting calls of dead bodies, families saying goodbye to loved ones who are already dead but they called you because they didn't know what else to do. You will be forced to do CPR on someone who you know should NOT have it done because your medical director is too lazy to look at current literature and say that codes should not be run in the Ambulance to the hospital. You will be forced to do CPR on a 99 year old male who is in a nursing home dying of a plethora of medical issues but his family doesn't get a DNR signed because "It's not what he would want" so you torture this poor 99 year old male with CPR and all the advanced treatments. You will also see the worst in people and you will also see the best in people. Some of the worst calls I've ever run have actually helped to shape me into a better person and a better medic. You will see some really intense things, just like they do in Chicago Fire but not as often. Please don't use Chicago fire as your baseline as to what EMS is about. I've been in EMS for nearly 20 years, I'm semi retired, but for those 20 years, the good has always outweighed the bad. To become a paramedic - you need to be an EMT first. Once you have the EMT there are two schools of thought. 1. Get a year or some arbitrary (depends on the so called expert you talk to) of experience in the field. 2. Go directly into paramedic School after emt school. The consensus here on this site is this - No matter what you decide to do, you need to get your paramedic education from a degree granting college and not a diploma mill type school. So a paramedic school from the local college where you will get at least a 2 year degree is the way to go. The paramedic education from the local fire department where they teach you to be a paramedic (this is a diploma mill type school) is NOT the way to go. There is an EMT-I somewhere in the mix but Missouri does not have that level of certification so I cannot speak to it. But others here will be able to.