Skydivediva,
As a fellow Lee County citizen and Lee County Paramedic here's hopefully some insight to your questioning:
Part-time employment is only for those who are employed full-time and are credentialed through our medical director and are willing to switch to part-time. The county does not hire part-time paramedics or EMT's straight off the street.
Our shift schedules are 24 hrs on 48 hrs off in a A, B, C, shift pattern. Meaning if you are assigned to A shift you work every A shift which is always every third day after the end of your previous shift. It's the same for B and C shift. So if today is an A shift then tomorrow is a B shift, and so on. Now we also do have 12 hr shifts called D and E shifts. they work 2 on 3 off one week and three on, two off the next. But as far as scheduling goes that's it.
Part-time employment means you sign up for your shifts ahead of time. You get to pick them. The only obligations are, you cannot work more the 48 hrs in a pay period (two weeks) and you must work at least two shifts (whether its 24 or 12) a month.
We also do not hire volunteers.
As far as the 16 new ambulance thing, that's news to me. If they're obtaining that many its not to add new trucks, its to replace the aging fleet of ambulances we have currently. The budget was slashed more then 40% over the past two years. We are currently operating on 2004 budget standards. Meaning we're operating on what we did in 2004.
Our call volume is up close to 25,000 more calls then 2004 (50,000 runs for 2004 vs 78,304 for 2010). For instance, if each call we're dispatched to cost the county $176.00 and were responding to an additional volume of 25,000 calls this year it would cost the county 4.4 million dollars more over the 2004 budget standards to run the system. So we're sitting in rough shape because of economy. But there have been no layoffs, no pay cuts, and no trucks shut down. They're hiring now, bc we just had a few people go to part-time. So they're trying to back-fill those positions to keep things status quo.
So should you go to school and follow through with it? Absolutely! It is one of the very few careers that are as rewarding as ours. I hope this helped you. If you need to you can PM me for more information.