I can do that !. & you thought some of us were crazy !

[VillageEMT]

From a rural volunteer prospective:

When I took the EMT-D course the county had just expanded it to 168 classroom hours plus 10 hours of clinical time or 10 transports. No one in the class thought that there were enough days to cram in all that a Basic needs to know in a rural county. ALS is frequently a "maybe, if available, luxury" for many of the squads in the county. We wish it was otherwise for our patients sake, but the money and people are just not there. We keep up on the latest methods and training is a big part of our volunteer time. You take a different view of EMS when your shortest transport will be 25 minutes and may be an hour or more in bad weather. It would be nice to have EMT-Ps on every call but it isn't going to happen any time soon. Right now we are down two ALS providers and are waiting for two of our people to finish the nine month EMT-CC course. Yes, nine months for a Critical Care EMT. The only Para course that we recognize runs almost two years and there are far too few people who can afford that time while holding down a full time job. So, we "do it" with what we have and encourage anyone fool enough to want to try it to go to class.

I grew up with an ex-Army RN for a mother and remember her quizzing doctors when ever I was sick. What a wonderful world it would be if we could just clone a dozen of her for our squad. I wishes were horses...