vollys or payed

[Timmy]

**Just to give you an understanding so my mini essay makes sense. In Australia to work emergency ambulance you pretty much have to hold a diploma or degree and it’s a full time paid job. As far as volunteer programs go we do have volunteer first responder type programs for very rural and remote communities were having paid paramedics is not viable. We also have a fire medical response program in major city’s were firefighters respond in a first aid capacity with 02 and defib to mainly time critical situations/arrests, in both these situations full time paramedics are paged at the same time and I haven’t heard of any volunteer service which can transport. I volunteer with an event standby type service again we don’t transport but call the state paramedics**

It seems that volunteering in Australia is quiet different compared to America. I guess people volunteer for different reasons. I think it’s important that certain standards are set and adhered to; even though it may only be volunteer I think it’s still important to maintain a professional service.

I volunteer with people who do it for different reasons whether it’s a time filler in retirement, uni students studying a related field to gain practical experience, people who want to help the community, people who just want to gain first aid skills, people use it as a stepping stone into the health field, the social side and we have quiet a few health care professionals who work as ambos, nurses, docs, allied health ect and like volunteering. Unfortunately we have a small group of whacker type people but there normally kept under wraps.

It’s also important to set out clear training and clinical standards, having a good training and educational work load that is flexible but still encumbers clinical competency and understanding. I find teaching everyone and making sure they all have a good grip on the ‘need to knows’ but also making the ‘nice to knows’ available and 9 times out of 10 you’ll get a good response. I was surprised as to how many people I volunteer with who fit under the ‘I like helping the community’ banner sit down and have a good look through my paramedics texts. Also having some sort of program that provides a happy medium for new members to ease them into the job without flooding them with information.

Equally important is implementing a plan for the people who are in it for the wrong reasons or don’t make an effort to learn ect. My service has quiet a few guidelines on what they expect you to do in order to maintain efficiency and if not meet you’ll be made non operational, this is also good for the whackers – you either weed them out or they relies they know nothing and decide to do something about it. We also have a clinical breaching program which basically means if you stuff up we sit down and help you out, provide more training and support but if you do it again we may look start looking at other options.

I think having a passion for caring, education, clinical understanding and competency is important.

From what I gather in US EMS you do a course and jump in without much guidance?

[Timmy]

Just to continue on re the differences between paid and volunteer.

To become a paid fire officer with my service you have to be so incredibly fit, pass aptitude, fitness, psychological, literacy, numerical and so much other stuff to even be considered for the recruitment program. If you chose to apply you’re put up against thousands of other applicants who are just as good if no better than you. If you make it though the screening program for the limited number of positions with the fire college you’re in for 8 months of full time hell and hardcore training. If you make it through the fire college and gain employment then your elite your passion, dedication and desire to push your self to unbelievable limits has paid off. You’re also in for daily training for the rest of your career. I volunteer as a firefighter, the standards are considerably lower but at the same time so is what volunteers are expected to do and the situations they are put in.

Same goes with EMS. To work as a paramedic in my state you must hold a 3 year degree which isn’t at all easy to pass. While completing this degree you find that you have no money, not much of a social life, spend hours on end studying crap you’ll never need on road, writing horrendously long essays that have no relevance to EMS, your away from home, family and friends and everything you know and love, bust your ass to even get a pass on the exam let alone getting a distinction and at the end of it the job security is really quiet low. Even when you pass your degree and make it to the screening program for a job the standards are pretty high and you’re competing for that one spot that hundreds of others are also going for. If you get a job you start as a student paramedic at the bottom of the food chain and have to work hard to impress the clinical instructors

In conclusion paid emergency service workers here have worked there ass off to get that job that doesn’t even pay well and the hours aren’t great. Anyone can volunteer but it takes guts and determination to be paid.

[EMS49393]

Timmy, are you sure you are only 18? I ask this not only because you are able to construct a well planned paragraph, but also because you seem too incredibly bright compared to most 18 year old people I meet. As a matter of fact, I can think of only one person under 25 that I actually enjoy holding a conversation with, and he happens to be 18. Two people, I'll include my eight year old, he's fabulous to converse with. I digress...

You are correct young sir. It is possible to attend a class for three weeks and be thrust onto an emergency ambulance as a primary provider of emergency care. This happens in often in volunteer systems, and occasionally in paid systems. But wait, it gets better. You could, after three weeks, be thrown onto an ambulance with a driver that took a 56 hour long first responder class. Do I want either of them working on my family or myself? Not a chance.

It is also possible in this great country, to attend a six month paramedic class, with minimal required A&P (usually a picture book written for third graders), and be thrust upon an emergency ambulance with the same guy that spent three whole weeks in class. Again, just hand me a refusal and I'll glady sign.

Other countries require a degree to work on an ambulance and provide care to a patient when they are at their sickest and most vulnerable state. It's a real shame that truly educated providers are so hard to find in this country.

Volunteer versus paid is really a lame argument when you consider how low our standards are for EMS personnel. Passionate people would step back and see this argument as a way to burn energy that can be spent working on more important projects, namely, education. It's time to raise the bar. If we increase educational demands, we will really see who is passionate. The passionate ones will be the paramedics that cared enough to spend four years of their lives in college, and they have the signed diploma to show for it.

By the way, original poster, I printed off your post and handed it, along with a red marker, to my eight year old son. He had a field day playing "find the error." Thanks for providing ten minutes of cheap entertainment to my son.

[Timmy]

Maybe America could look at similar programs to what we run in Australia.

A few ambulance services in Australia offer a 3 year program which involves a mix of theory and on road training. Again, you must make the cut in regards to applications but once in you undergo your 6-8 week introduction training, you’re employed as a student paramedic at a station and work under a senior paramedic. There is still quiet a bit of classroom learning, tests, essays and exams though out the 3 years but you’re also exposed to so much ‘real life’ situations. At the conclusion of 3 years you’re awarded your diploma and you have a job but have the opportunity to complete the degree with quiet a lot of recognition of prior learning and if you’re lucky the service may pay for it.

I’d very much love to be completing my paramedic course this way but unfortunately I don’t meet the age requirements and life experience expectancy. I’m very much a practical/visual learning and find the course I’m doing pretty tough work and normally get extremely bogged down in the theory and become quiet confused and disorientated because we get very minimal on road exposure and I dislike treating plastic dolls and wading though multiple pages of fluff to get the point. I can read something thousands of times and still won’t understand until I can do it on a real person or watch it being done. But hey that’s just my retarded way

When people make spelling mistakes it’s either laziness or illiteracy. In either case these can hopefully be rectified with some assistance from the right people hence we should be encouraging people with literacy difficulty to seek assistant and strive forward to reach their potential. It’s no good sitting here banging on about spelling mistakes if you can’t offer any solution to help fix the problem, sure spell check is an option but its only a bandaid solution to a bigger picture. Just like I received a very rude awakening when I sat my fitness assessment for clinical placement only to discover how unfit I was, so instead of dwelling on the issue and banging on about how the fitness test doesn’t relate to paramedics I decided to get a personal trainer in a hope to pass it next time!

[paramatt_]

Just to add on to what Timmy has stated, if you want to be a paramedic in Australia, you really have to work for it. Even graduating from a 3 year degree program you'll end up commencing work at lower level (something like an EMT-I) with anywhere from an additional 9-12 month probation training. Rational? I figure a lot has to do with the lack of medical control - just about all standing orders, thus a heck of a lot responsibility.

So what dose this have to do with volunteers? I think this sums it up quite well...

In conclusion paid emergency service workers here have worked there ass off to get that job that doesn’t even pay well and the hours aren’t great. Anyone can volunteer but it takes guts and determination to be paid.

As stated, yeah, you'll find some excellent and devoted volunteers in organization xyz, as well as some under trained paid EMSers...as previously posted quite the slippery slope to discuss really.

Not to further debate the paid v. volly issue, but I find this to be quite interesting..

http://www.readersdigest.com.au/content/40144

http://www.gallup.com/poll/25888/Nurses-To...rofessions.aspx

[ERDoc]

"But I think my dedication trumps any vollie any day of the week."

Really? You do this for no pay, hours away from freinds and family for education, training, runs, and spend more out of pocket than you make in any stipend you might get for taking the calls?

If you had true dedication, you would have taken yourself out of service.... a dead medic saves nobody.

First, Asys said in his post that he took the rest of the day off. Second, if you are receiving a stipend then you are not doing it for "no pay" and are not volunteering (use whatever word you want but you are getting paid). Why can't someone get a paycheck for doing something be dedicated and have passion for the job? It seems to me that certain people are equating a paycheck with a lack of dedication or passion. In the end, does it matter who has more? Isn't the important thing who can provide better care (which we'll leave to the thousands of other threads that have been started)? I'd rather have a doctor with the personality of a loaf of bread but who is competent and up on his literature than a really friendly doctor who doesn't know what he is doing. The same goes for my choice of prehospital provider. Being friendly matters when you're playing gold (which I don't do by the way) not when you are making decisions that will affect people's lives and futures.

[Timmy]

Well rest assured the pay in EMS isn’t that great, so that rules out the pay check idea lol!

[Flasurfbum]

Passion is a moot point when we're dealing with people's lives. It's good to have someone that loves their job, and loves doing what they're doing, but it's even better if that person who loves their job also has the knowledge and skills to help my mother when her heart gives out.

Volunteers for the most part have little to no accountability for their actions. From my experience, most feel that increased educational requirements are nothing but a chore and serve no purpose. If they make a mistake in patient care that could be detrimental to the patient, oh well lesson learned.

Paid is the way to go.

DING DING DING!

[Amhet1]

"First, Asys said in his post that he took the rest of the day off. Second, if you are receiving a stipend then you are not doing it for "no pay" and are not volunteering (use whatever word you want but you are getting paid). "

True, took the rest of the day AFTER he became grossly symptomatic. What if that occurred while treating a patient? Or transporting the patient to the hospital? Instead of just risking himself, he has to risk himself, his partner, his patient, and everyone on the streets.

Second, and more importantly, if you want to equate money in whatever form to volunteerism, then we must not have near as many volunteer services as I thought. When I started in this business 30 years ago, our small service provided a stipend of $5.00 a call (A call being a patient transported to a hospital, NOT for standby's, being on call, community activities, meetings, training). With that, we had to pay for our EMT class, CEUs, uniforms, laundry, gas, refreshers, etc. You didnt "volunteer" for the money, you volunteered to help others.

I didnt realize that by todays definition, that was a "paid" position.

[ERDoc]

"First, Asys said in his post that he took the rest of the day off. Second, if you are receiving a stipend then you are not doing it for "no pay" and are not volunteering (use whatever word you want but you are getting paid). "

True, took the rest of the day AFTER he became grossly symptomatic. What if that occurred while treating a patient? Or transporting the patient to the hospital? Instead of just risking himself, he has to risk himself, his partner, his patient, and everyone on the streets.

Second, and more importantly, if you want to equate money in whatever form to volunteerism, then we must not have near as many volunteer services as I thought. When I started in this business 30 years ago, our small service provided a stipend of $5.00 a call (A call being a patient transported to a hospital, NOT for standby's, being on call, community activities, meetings, training). With that, we had to pay for our EMT class, CEUs, uniforms, laundry, gas, refreshers, etc. You didnt "volunteer" for the money, you volunteered to help others.

I didnt realize that by todays definition, that was a "paid" position.

Although I will leave the final sat to Asys, it sound to me like he was fine until the episode happened. If you are receiving pay for doing work then you are paid, albeit your pay sucked. If they were reimbursing you for the supplies you had to purchase, that is a different story. When I was a volunteer we did not receive any money. We were given our uniforms but had to return them when we left the company. We had to pay for our training but would get reimbursed if we passed and stayed with the company for a year. If you failed or if you left prior to being there a year you paid for the course. If you are being paid to do work, you are not a volunteer. So, if you weren't volunteering for the money (is that even possible), did you return the $5 per call that you got? If not, why not?