EMT-B straight to Medic?

[Dustdevil]

THANK YOU! That is the point I have been trying to make for a long time now. If I lived anywhere else I'd probably want to get some experience first, but alas I am stuck in TX and am in medic school after finishing my EMT class last semester.

Your problem is not that nobody hires basics. Your problem is that all the services are run by hosemonkeys. Completely different problem.

[jenniemt]

true. I could get a job running 911 if I went to the fire academy. Right. That will happen when airplanes swim and fish fly.

[Yummymedic05]

:oops: I take all the runs and have my Basic partner drive me for the one simple fact that Im not comfortable driving an ambulance.

[Nate]

I keep hearing about such services. Can this really be happening in many places? I really can't imagine it. It's crazy. Not only are you denying your basics experience, but you are creating an inevitable resentment of the basics by medics.

I would have zero respect for any administrator who pushed such a policy.

When I'm working for the city service we are required to be in the back because the EMT-Basic that drives us is a volunteer and we (the paramedic) are paid. So if the city is going to pay for a paramedic to be there, then they expect that paramedic to be in the back all of the time. Which I have no issue with, we don't typically spend 24 hours running every minute of the day.

When I'm at the private service it is similar yet different. The theory is that should a call come in that warrants an ALS response, it is the duty of the paramedic to examine the patient, and should they rule that the patient does not need ALS interventions they are free to leave (as we are squad based) and the BLS ambulance will transport. I'd say that a good 90% of all calls I'm dispatched on, I ride into the ER. I just don't really want to risk it, so unless it is something like clogged g-tube, stubbed toe, isolated minor trauma, etc... I will ride the call. For the trucks that have paramedics on them, they are expect to ride every call into the ER with the exception of the types of calls listed above.

I don't see that it is with holding my basics from learning and getting experience. They are still in the back with me, they assess the patient, they are often quizzed on the call afterwords, and they play an active role in the patent's care.

Absolutely as well as promoting paramedic burnout unnecessarily. Your admin is a member here, if memory serves me. He should exlain why this policy exists.

This is done to set us apart from other services, and like I said above; it is there to make sure the paramedic rides every MVC, every sick call, and every other call that could go either way. The actual policy is that "highest certified level" will ride the call to the ER as a result of a few bad paramedics and EMT-Is that thought they didn't need to be on calls. One of which was an EMT-I who made an EMT-B ride a chest pain call. She was fired for doing it, but that was after the fact. The policy is here to prevent such incidents from happening. After all, this EMT-I had never done this before, so who was to know that this was going to happen.

The only paramedics that have truly complained about running the calls were usually the ones who would try to off load everything on their EMT-Basic (and they don't typically last very long).