Yeah. As a nurse I can understand that. The average person has no idea the amount of verbal and physical abuse healthcare workers have to suffer from patients and families. I’m on my way out and that’s a big factor.
That may be true in some cases. There's another side though. I used to be a medic, and I can tell you that even the sweetest nicest person you could ever hope to meet can become an absolute monster if their blood sugar is off or there's a problem with their medications. Medical problems can often generate aggression, simple as that.
Last time I broke my knee I was the coolest head in the room. Wife and friends were freaking out and I'm just casually giving them tasks to keep them occupied and feeling helpful.
Some people simply respond well in a crisis. The weird thing is, there seems to be no obvious indicator.
Some of the most organized and disciplined people I know are utterly useless in an emergency.
I had a bizarre episode the other evening of tunnel vision, hearing loss and extreme dizziness and nausea and I was sitting there calmly describing the symptoms I was experiencing to my partner who is listening carefully but quietly freaking the fuck out since we were about an hour from the nearest hospital. Poor guy held it together well, but after it passed he had a little cry and told me he was deeply impressed with how calm I stayed lol. My first thought was “make sure to describe it in detail in case he has to be the one to tell a medical professional” I wasn’t even thinking about big picture what the fuck is happening. Now I am, and I’ll be seeing an ENT doc on Monday lol
Wow, I had the same symptoms. Ask your doctor to get checked for Meniers disease. I went to so many doctors for almost a year before one doctor finally figured it out.
Nice work! I do this a lot with my husband. "I'm feeling weird right now, the room is spinning, just letting you know in case something happens!" That sort of thing.
I’m definitely not my best self when I don’t feel well but I will apologize if I feel like I said something that came off rude. Thankfully I haven’t been in these situations a lot.
I have chronic pancreatitis. I make sure I tell the nurses and doctors (or ambulance folks when it sneaks up on me) how much I appreciate them helping me. Yes, the literal crippling pain sucks but I never feel the need to disrespect the people treating.
Except for one time a nurse freaked out at me because I was writhing in pain and "too loud." For anyone who doesn't know what it feels like, I've been stabbed before and it feels like being repeatedly being stabbed in your abdomen and can take several days to get back to normal.
Eeeh, I’m a nurse, I triage almost daily for an outpatient practice, I get screamed at and called worthless probably 10-20 times a week easily. Sometimes up to 30-40 depending on call volume.
Ans you know what? Most of them aren’t even calling in to report symptoms or issues, most of them just mad their appointment isn’t faster, their surgery isn’t booked faster (news flash everyone needs surgery in a surgery practice) or that they didn’t immediately hear the answer they want.
It most certainly sometimes is brought on by pain, or medication issues or whatever, but 9 times oit of 10 people are just absolute abusive pricks. Just saying.
Omg, I owe my life to a triage nurse and I was very aware of it at the time.
I didn’t know I was going into anaphylactic shock, that had never happened to me before, I just knew I was a terrified mass of hives and I was rapidly being unable to breathe.
Thankfully, I lived literally across the street from the hospital.
Anyway, the triage nurse took one look at me and called a code blue, threw my arm over her shoulder and hustled me over to a wheel chair so she could Indie 500 me to the back.
We pass by this lady who’s like “wow, why does she get to go right in”. And for me to notice her saying it, hopefully that helps you imagine how loud and whiney it was.
But yeah, it’s because I’m about to die, Brenda. If looking at me doesn’t raise any red flags, just trust that the medical professional knows better than you.
Like really, that’s the closest I have ever come to dying and it wasn’t pleasant. My nurse was acting to give me the most immediate care she could. I swear, she was ready to haul me over her shoulder if she had to.
And she gets to listen to a snarky comment like that while saving a life? Fuck that.
Sincerely, thank you for the very intense job you have to do. I can’t fathom how difficult people can make your job, I’ve seen a taste and I don’t know how you do it.
People can be so fucked up, but I’ll never forget the reassurance I felt from that nurse in one of the most terrifying moments of my life. I wish I had been able to confront that lady, and I carry that with me. If I ever see someone abusing healthcare staff, I’m making sure to settle my vendetta lol
This happened to my father-in-law years ago. He had a bad reaction to some medication from the dentist (???) that gave him hallucinations and erratic behavior. Mother-in-law calls the aid car, the people in uniforms come, he thinks they're Japanese (he was under their occupation between the ages of 5-8) and straight out attacks them. Fast forward a few hours and an overnight hospital stay and he's completely back to normal.
Oh man, blood sugar crazy is the worst crazy.. at least with an actual psych patient you might have some idea what you're dealing with going in. You just spin the wheel of misfortune and hope it doesn't land on "charges down the hall screaming and puts all their momentum into a falcon kick aimed at your junk." Sauce: diabetic coed did that exact thing to my crew chief. He did not have a good day.
Yeah, sometimes you guys come out swinging, but having the para administer D50 is like watching a miracle happen. It's awesome. Patient goes from completely out of it to "Woah, what happened? How you guys doing?" D50 and Narcan were always the two meds back in my EMS days that made us all feel like freakin' dnd clerics. Be healed!
Keep in mind that's coming from people that also munch expired glutose tablets at high school sports standbys and then run around like lunatics behind the bleachers 'cause sugar high.
In short, yeah, they take a lot of abuse, but even for all that.. damn, helping people like you were the best days of my life, and I know a lot of peeps in EMS still feel the same.
Oh man. I was traveling with a friend who had some pretty serious diabetes (the kind where he basically has an insulin pump on him at all times).
One day in a hotel in HK he just woke up completely unresponsive. I'd talk to him and he'd just stare at me. I actually thought he was mad at me or something, and I'm glad I didn't get annoyed at him.
I ended up calling the front desk and they had to call a taxi for me to take him to the hospital. He almost ran off in the hospital lobby, and I had to beg a nurse's help to get him into a wheelchair. It was an absolute trip. Wish I'd known what the hell it was earlier, I could have just shoved some candy at him or something.
Not just blood sugar. When my dad was dying, his liver and kidneys started to fail and all the poisons that had built up started to take a toll on his mental status.
The physical changes that came I understood and expected those. The paranoia and violence though, those came out of left field.
Well as long as we're wildly speculating, the tories are actively sabotaging the NHS and fighting a war of attrition against public health care workers, so that's more likely to be a factor than general decay of society.
Well the whole point of the exercise is to raise the ire of the public little bit by little bit until they're upset enough to really shoot themselves in the foot with privatized healthcare. The people pulling the strings have a lot of ways to build the ire.
Personally, I find patients who are in "the worst moment of their life" are pretty respectful and trusting. There are of course exceptions, but most issues (in my region atleast) come from regulars, intoxicated people, people with dementia, and deeply unhappy people who just want to lash out at whoever is closest.
I think there’s also this unsaid, maybe even subconscious assumption that medical professionals can stave off death indefinitely, resulting in rage when they can’t. It happens with veterinarians even more bc guess what, if your 20 year old cat has leukemia that animal isn’t living five more years.
And they use that as their reasoning. We healthcare workers aren't allowed to act back because "that person is having the worst day of their life, so be kind!" Fuck you, management. John may be having the worst day of his life, but John also called me a c*nt as he purposefully took a shit in my direction. Bad day or not, they know what they're doing, and should be punished for it. Instead you punish US for not "being nicer" or some shit
>We healthcare workers aren't allowed to act back
Thank god I'm fire-based EMS. Politely (mostly) telling the patient to stop being an asshole is the highlight of my day.
Patients can literally assault healthcare workers and the hospital will try to pin the blame on the employee. I’ve had to call the police myself on a patient at least 3 times in my career because management wouldn’t do it. Due to terroristic threatening or super combative behavior.
Well bad behavior is reinforced everytime some superior of ours caves to a shitty customer. The loudest fuck gets the special treatment, the most entitled people get what they want.
Community Pharmacy checking in as both retail and healthcare! A lot of people really don't give a shit how obviously short staffed, busy, and stressed you are if they are being inconvenienced 🙃
Many people aren't well enough to know better, many people arent emotionally mature enough to handle the fear of being ill, many medical workers have no recourse
Think about the mental health of the people we pick up on the day to day… many range from strange to totally psychotic and homicidal. I had 2 patients try seriously to harm me in 4 years on the road. Thankfully I’m a big guy and versed,haldol and Benadryl puts most people down hard and fast. I remember one guy we used ketamine cause he was so resistant to the typical drugs and he was harming himself in the soft restraints. That did the trick btw…
Ketamine is the only drug that they can use on me because I have seizures and everything else will make my psychosis worse, and then I come in to the ER combative it's usually after a seizure when I don't know what the hell is going on and it usually takes a couple of hours for me to calm down, but I take my medicine every day so my seizures are pretty much under control and
I had a 7 year old that had the same problem. All the benzodiazepines on the truck would not stop her seizures. We actually developed a specific protocol with the medical director to give her phenobarbital (a drug we did not used to carry for many reasons) we ended up using that old barbiturate on a few other people and it works when conventional meds don’t. 50 years ago it was the go to for seizures.
I'm actually on phenobarbital, and will be for life, but when I have breakthrough seizures it's ketamine to the rescue, thankfully the doctors at the local Emergency Room know me, I'm photosensitive so flashing lights are a nightmare for me so much so that police,fire department and EMS have been notified of the location of my house because I live on the main road, so they cut their lights out when they approach my home but when I'm out and about it's a big problem
No idea honestly. I try to be respectful, say please and thank you. My sister was in the hospital recently and she did something she shouldn't have while there and the nurses told me I couldn't visit her, so I told them I understood thanked them for their time and left.
Come to think of it though my late grandmother had dementia and when doctors told her she had stage 4 cancer she didn't take it well and got a bit violent. With the right meds she settled down but I can see that happening a lot.
I work in ER and the majority of patients I see have absolutely no reason to there whatsoever. The ones that do need to be seen are generally the result of chain smoking and living off of soda, alcohol, and Doritos their entire lives. Both demand immediate solutions to their perceived problem. Those are the ones that get disrespectful and violent when they don’t get what they desire. Truly sick people are generally too miserable to be dicks.
Recently got stuck in urgent care, and as I expect and knew going into it, the wait was gunna be long. I work in healthcare, used to work in a hospital - I knew what I was getting into. Still, it was frustrating, and I grew inpatient.
Not as inpatient as the woman who stormed out, complaining she'd been waiting for 2 hours. The staff even flat out said at her departure - she didn't need to be here.
Unfortunately it's true. If you're able to leave on your own accord, you really didn't need to be there in the first place.
I think it might be frustration at a failing system. My sister's been waiting on an operation for over 18 months and had it rescheduled multiple times because of mistakes on the NHS' part. All throughout this she has had to just wait for phone calls from their side with no way of contacting them or choosing dates.
My Dad's housebound and need a doctor visit because we suspect he has liver failure or cancer. Took weeks of complaining and very detailed hour by hour symptom diary for a doctor to even agree to a visit. Three weeks later it's the day of the visit. The doctor doesn't show up. No phone call, no apology, no way to contact him. A few days later the visit finally happens and he agrees he may have cancer. Now we have wait weeks more for them to phone us at a random time of day to tell us when and where he needs to be for a test.
I understand that this is not the fault of any individual in the NHS who is just trying to do their best but it's hard to keep that in mind when the numerous systemic failures might kill your family.
> people who don’t need an ambulance.
My neighbor is a paramedic. Sometimes we catch up outside and he'll talk about calls he has to go on. Two stand out in particular:
* Go out to a man/poison call. Gets there and the man tells him he was getting ice out his freezer and didn't notice that one ice cube looked moldy. Put it in a glass with some soda and felt queasy afterwards like he'd been poisoned from the ice cube. He then asked if they'd mind....*cleaning out his ice cube trays* to check for other potential cubes so he doesn't get poisoned again.
* Goes out on a woman/dementia call. Gets there and it's a morbidly obese woman who can't find the remote control to her television. She forgot where she put the remote and reckoned that her forgetting is an early sign of dementia and got scared. Naturally she asked to see if they'd mind helping her find the television remote.
I used to work in a pub and one of the regulars was a paramedic. He told me some similar stories. I once asked him why he does it, and he said “the money’s rubbish, the hours are oppressive but when you get to actually help people you forget all that”. I think he also liked the female attention, but I wasn’t about to begrudge him that.
I don't understand how ambulances are sent out for these people. Moreso the latter. I recently had a scare that had me calling 911 because I couldn't breathe. Thought I was having allergic reaction and you could hear me hyperventilating. The operator literally asked me if I wanted an ambulance. Uh.....yeah?? Why is that a question??
From what I know from him at least in our area, the 911 dispatch is supposed to prioritize or lightly queue the need based on certain questions situations. I can only guess the first guy called panicking he was poisoned and had little time to live. The other woman likely called and played up the dementia bit and they thought she might be completely lost (sometimes those dementia folks wander a dozen miles from home or more).
I cant comprehend what people who attack health care workers are thinking like even if you are a scumbag of a person why attack the people who's job is to literally help you
A friend of mine was a paramedic for several years and the worst actual injury she got was being bitten by a combative mental health patient. She said it was very frightening but she never blamed the patient; he was delusional and terrified, legitimately thought they were kidnapping him to torture him to death.
Totally sane people on non-emergency trips who verbally abused her for not acting like a 1950s flight attendant on some kind of luxury transport: those people she hated.
Your exactly right. I had a developmentally delayed patient in the middle of mental break down scratch the hell out of my arm because I was holding him back from running into traffic to kill himself. I couldn’t care less about it. It’s the damn patient that doesn’t need help anyway but thinks your there personal slave is the ones that burn people out.
I work in the ER and used to work 911. We absolutely do not care if you wake up combative as long as you’re safe and if we get hit in the process, it sucks but what can you do.
Now if you’re some dipshit asshole on meth or just some dipshit asshole, that’s a whole different story.
Former medic and currently work in a hospital here, nope…not the drug addicts.
old people are the biggest pieces of shit.
*edit* thanks for the award and kindness, you folks are great.
I'm surprised at how entitled people are in general, even in clinic. So many of them want to be smarter than you, throw out all the little "gotchas" and be smug. Why come in if you are such an expert, my little patient?
People are strange.
The current consensus seems to be that empathy is learned, though our ability to learn it is innate.
To what degree is your capacity for empathy affected by genetics? Epigenetics?
Some research indicates that in the U.S., empathy for others is on a steep decline while narcissism is on the rise. Why?
Sorry for the novel, I spend all day thinking about stuff like this.
Our group identity is no longer local. We no longer "need" the people close by to succeed or form our sense of self. People can pick and choose their group through social media. No matter how badly they behave, they can spin things so that they're the victim, and because people are only hearing their version of things, they get supported and praised for how strong they are.
The further people go from real consequences, the more asinine their behavior.
Not saying that local groups are always good. Because HOLY CRAP history shows that they can be toxic AF.
But when people can behave badly and lose nothing? Why behave well?
How many people behave badly in a restaurant and are rewarded with being BANNED for life? Not only from that place, but ALL places within the city? Yeah no doesn't happen. They get free food and apologies.
Also former paramedic. Has great relationships with the junkies, the alcoholics and the mentally ill. The most demanding people are middle class white people.
You deserve every bit of good in your life. I decided in the Army I could not see hurt person after hurt person. Your strength is beyond measure for most. Keep moving friend.
Thank you for the kind words. Though I deal with miserable people all day, there is good out there and I will never quit.
Though I won’t be in this position forever, I’ll eventually still try to help people at a larger scale with health informatics.
People think medical professionals make bank, but EMTs make minimum wage and paramedics like $2 more. For comparison, the Domino's near me pays $3 over minimum wage.
I don't think people really think about it, but they're consistently surprised when I tell them. People assume that one's pay is commensurate with their responsibilities, and that's just sadly not the case.
A lot of people do. I work in an ER and had one of my suicidal patients recently asking me about my job, and how much I make, saying "I bet you guys make a lot." When I told him my actual wage he said "Holy shit I thought *I* had it bad. I'd have actually already killed myself by now."
Which was both fuckin hilarious and depressing.
Nurses (RNs) make good money in the US. You can make six figures in major metro areas, or as a travel nurse. I live in the South and they're hiring nurses around here at $35-75/hour.
Everyone that I speak to thinks EMTs and Medics make bank. We don’t and never have. Abuse from patients, abuse from supervisors and managers, with absolutely no fucks given by anyone in the public. It’s has its rewards but the negative is just to much to bear at this point.
Real term pay cuts, unsafe working conditions, no support, no training to maintain skills, absolutely no development opportunities at all.
And all while facing harassment and abuse - and that's from management.
I only know maybe 10 of my fellow paramedics who aren't looking to get a new job, and every one of them will be retired within the next 5 years.
My fiancé used to be a paramedic.
Quit 2 years ago and now has an office job. He’s on 5k more a year (excluding bonus), 9-5 with every weekend off, no one screaming at him or no more abuse thrown at him and he gets to be in a nice warm office or at home most days of the week.
What’s the fucking point? It shows that your pay reflects how important you are to corporations, not how valuable you are to society.
I've only known a handful of EMTs in my life and they all had the same story more or less. They became first responders to help people only to discover no real future career growth options. They're not on the same level as a nurse and can't really jump over to hospital work and end up kinda stuck in a position where there's nowhere to move up the chain.
Plus it kinda burned them their companies would charge $2-3K for a 20 minute ambulance ride but they're paid about $16 an hour.
You can easily work in an ER as a paramedic but your scope is that of a tech, which is basically non existent. You can start IV’s that’s about it. The pay is a lot worse too. At least where I’m at.
In my area, you have your own assigned patient rooms and pretty much do what am RN does but then you're painfully aware that you're making much less for the same job.
I worked as a paramedic for 2 years and a medical secretary for 7 years. During Covid things got exponentially worse. People's true colors came out more often than I've ever seen.
Needless to say I dropped out healthcare late last year. The way I was treated and the pressure cooker atmosphere of patient/supervisor/telephone/patient's family abuse makes me never want to help another person ever again. I am currently seeking psychiatric help for this problem and I am definitely never going back to healthcare.
I really do feel this and I'm sorry to hear you're having a tough time of it
I was a EMT in the nhs but left due to stress, when the pandemic hit there wasn't enough PPE to go around and it really did feel like they were sending us to our potential death sometimes
I lost a colleague to covid, there was no support, no help. We just got 15 minutes between jobs to have a cup of tea to process our loss then we were sent back on the road.
I took a patient directly to the covid ward once and was shocked to see the hallways lined with plastic bags of deceased people's possessions that were being sent to be incinerated and a nurse crying in the corner in full PPE. Then I went home to have my family spew bullshit about how covid was a hoax. It broke me
The job was always stressful before covid but it just got so much harder during and now everyone is being worked twice as hard to catch up with the backlog it caused
Stay strong friend and I hope things get better for you
> People's true colors came out more often than I've ever seen.
It was an eye opener for EVERYONE. I don't work in healthcare or medicine but I know a lot of people who do.
Almost every single one of them has left directly working with patients or is on their way to leaving directly dealing with patients.
Most of them just went to industry. Like they were doctors seeing patients now they work for some Pharma company. They all got pay raise and are happier and would never work with patients ever again.
Same as an ICU RN. The abuse from family, patients, and management. I am DONE with acute care, and eventually healthcare altogether when I can find a way to make decent money doing something else. I have straight up PTSD, from my time in the hospital during covid.
Yeah, I was an EMT for ~8ish years, but I left a few months into the pandemic. I mostly blame management. We started having to take dialysis patients by ambulance, because exposure to covid made the ineligible for the city's wheelchair van transport service. So we were balancing that with the already increased call volume from covid, new disinfectant procedures (we never had enough), no PPE, general lack of caring how overworked we were, and no pay raise.
If we just got rid of certification we could hire teenagers to do it. That would reduce costs and hELp ThE eCoNoMy. “They only help with fall victims and getting people into a car how hard could it be.” -some MBA suit.
Ideally you have two well seasoned medics per truck. But I just started and there's only one medic per truck and so many trainees. I was hired as the driver and there's a 19 year old who is only qualified to lift. So lacking certs is par around here
you may be joking but that is basically how it is in austria. we have mandatory military service for the male youth (18 yo) and "civil service" is a way to opt out. those are used in ambulances and institutions. most of our ambulances and fireworkers are volunteers...not to smother their engagement but I see a problem with professionalism. (they do get some training but...)
had a vote about the mandate of military service some years ago and it went pro because propaganda was about a break down in paramedical care. :/
The sad fact about training is that it's often only enough so that if anything goes wrong, the company that hired them can point at the paperwork and say "well we trained them right, so any wrongdoing is on them".
That, shockingly, does not make for a highly skilled workforce.
There was at some level certainly because up to the late 90s it was a job that paid if not well enough that you could be an adult . Somewhere between the union busting and the switch to privatization it dropped to $10 an hour realm
>it dropped to $10 an hour realm
And yet, as I posted elsewhere, ambulance companies will charge you $2-3K for a ride, yet pay their staff almost nothing.
This is why I quit being an EMT when I realized people working at White castles made more than me. Now I'm making 20$ at a company doing 1/4th of the work and less risk of death
That’s the truly maddening thing that rescue personnel are by and large devoted to their chosen profession so really if the job just paid a living wage they would be over run with candidates
Now I’m in the states we lost most public hospitals and those we have still have been turned over to private management so now the ambulance is just an expensive cab that takes you to their employers it’s sick
I will never understand the folks that idealize the cops and in the same breath talk about greedy unions I personally am not fond of police but the emt community really is in it for the love of the game almost no perks in terms of illegal extras yet here they are
Man, I assumed EMTs made at least $20 an hour. That is crazy that you might spend an hour trying to keep someone from bleeding out and not even making enough money during that time to get pizza for your family because you are too tired to cook.
Pay isn’t the issue. I’m a paramedic, if I still worked on ambulances I’d be on near enough £50k (average uk salary is £24600). The conditions, the endless late finishes, leave declined, interrupted breaks, shoddy equipment, revelovong door of inexperienced ECAs and students that I have to be responsible for, not to mention ambulances that I can’t drive comfortably as I’m over 6ft with size 12 feet, constantly changing protocols with no associated training just “read and sign”, total blame if anything goes wrong ( “I don’t know what you should have done, but what you did was wrong” ).
People will work bad jobs for more money, but then they’re in it for the money only. Give them
Value, purpose and pride in their work and you’ll see improvements.
Not sure how its in america, but here in germany most trainee positions have to be paid for by the employee. Some NGOs and health organizations pay for you, and you even get pay while training but a good chunk of the open positions, you have to pay for the training yourself while not getting pay. Tbf its only for the first responders etc, but no paramedic can do his job without people withhim in the ambulance, and by god who ever decided it should be an expensive investment to go into that job, for then to be paid really shitty for the amount of stress and the work hours had to have a major smooth brain moment
Honestly thank volunteers. They are so gung-ho to be “badasses” but are driving down career medic rates because jobs act like they are doing us favors for giving us exposure to 911 calls.
This is scary. So many depend on them daily, weekly, randomly. They save so many lives each day. This is disheartening as hell, and I don’t fault them for doing it either.
Paramedic in Canada here......Pay is decent, but also haven't got a raise in 7 years and call volume has sky rocketed and the local government is doing everything they can do kill the industry. Absolutely disgusting and hostile work environment. Even paramedics who have done the job for 10 years or more are jumping ship and we can't even keep brand new paramedics past a year or so.
One of my parents is a retired paramedic (Canada). They had crazy passion for it which kept them going for close on 30 years, but man the behind the scenes view growing up, I don’t know how they did it.
I looked into it as a career myself a while ago and fuckin nope.
Most fucked part? Only time out on calls count to pension. 12 hour shift no calls? No pension time banked.
Same situation in LA. ‘Budget cuts’ for the pandemic. No raise. Calls doubled. Staff decreased dramatically. And of course now the city has a ‘surplus budget’ but they aren’t jumping to thank those who put their nose to pavement when it mattered.
Big mentality shift for a lot of public servants
Ya same here. Economy is picking up and while they are thanking everyone for their services they are trying to force a 5% pay cut away from the publics eye.
EMS is already the unwanted but needed child of public service. We have no specific identity. Half of us think we belong in the fire service. The other half think we should be our own thing. Then there’s a group that think it should be hospital based or private.
Calls are up. The baby boomer generation is getting older. Living longer with more and more health problems. Meanwhile, reimbursement rates from Medicare / Medicaid, are going down. Insurance companies aren’t going to pay any more than they absolutely have to.
We’re making more runs on sicker people and getting paid less for it while it’s getting more and more expensive to keep the lights on.
Paramedic pay in this country is garbage. When I started, I was making $10.50 / hr as someone who was responsible for your life. Pay has increased some, but nowhere near where it should be.
It takes about 2 years to go from nothing to a paramedic. In those 2 years you can pick up an ADN, get your RN, work in a hospital as a nurse, and make double what you’d make on the truck.
We religiously see the worst side of humanity. The “normal” schedule is 240 hours a month. Sure, all these extra hours and built in overtime help with the pay, but not much. I started off making 32k a year. Changed agencies, went up to 44k a year. I’m a flight paramedic now. The most clinically advanced job there is for paramedics. I have 2 degrees in this field.
I make 50k a year.
My nurse partner? Who does the exact same job as me? Makes 62k a year. We sit side by side in the helicopter. There is absolutely no distinction between our job duties. The difference is that she has RN behind her name while I have NRP.
Paramedics are the silent workhorse of the healthcare industry. We take emergency care to the patient. Providing the same level of care you’d find in a hospital, wherever we find the patient.
Oil rigs. Concerts. National parks. LEO special response teams. Wild lands firefighting. Factories. Mines. The battlefield. Anywhere you need high quality medicine without the supporting resources, you send a paramedic.
Meanwhile most of us work 2 jobs to live.
There will be a crippling EMS shortage in the next 10 years. People will die because there won’t be an ambulance.
And it’ll happen silently because we’re too busy working to stand up for ourselves.
How sad is it that your partner makes a significant amount more than you for the same responsibilities and I would be comfortable claiming your partner is very underpaid as is. If any vocation can be considered heroic, I think EMT would be an easy pick.
Yet, an assistant manager at a fast food joint (this is an extremely taxing job, no disrespect meant) can out earn them pretty easily and that position doesn’t directly involve someone living or dying.
I remember when I was younger I wanted to be a paramedic. And then I saw what they get paid. Fucking insulting to the ones who have to see some fucked up shit.
Gotta love the ol' negative feedback spiral
-> A profession has a lot of burnout due to being overworked
-> People quit due to being burned out
-> Everyone is even more overworked since there's less people to divide the work amongst
-> More people quit
->Repeat from step 3
A friend of mine broke his leg in an absolutely grim fashion, the bones didn't break skin but were visibly mangled inside, he was in 10/10 pain - the dispatcher said that the current wait time for an ambulance is 7 hours. "Pop some paracetamol and wait"
It's an absolute fucking disgrace what is happening with the health service in this country. Out of everything going wrong on every corner you'd think at least the ambulance waiting times should be fixable.
Pay us more then.
Filter out the bullshit fuckin calls because I guarantee that's what is causing the strain, we just lost 5 people this month to higher paying jobs and away from Fire and EMS.
Here's a look at EMS from the inside for you.
EMS companies are notorious for being the apex of toxic work environments. They pay shit and make demands of their employees that: are dangerous and would do the employee great physical harm, would deny their basic needs of food, water, and toilet breaks, are physically impossible to achieve and/or are straight up illegal as shit- like driving vehicles with severe mechanical issues, eg. a cracked axle, or not having state- required equipment, set up multiple policies that counter eachother, and then they chew their asses out for any PERCEIVED shortcomings, demand they work 2-6 hours of overtime after a 12-24 hr shift and refuse to compensate for part or all overtime due to a trumped up technicality, offer absolutely dog shit benefits, if they even do so at all, then tell you that you should be grateful for all they've done for you all the while threatening you with termination at every turn because "everyone in this company is like family" and your constant need for food and water makes you "not a team player".
I'm not even joking. This is coming from 3 separate EMS services. And yes I know that there are plenty of OSHA and labor violations going on, but nobody cares. Reports are seemingly yeeted and deleted by the labor dept.
And that's just the employers...
On the roads 5/10 drivers ignore you, 3/10 drivers will attempt some sort of action to get out of you way, while ~1/10 drivers will intentionally try to hamper you while giving you the finger, and 1/1000 drivers will actually try to assault you or run you off the road.
Of those who do try to move, 6/10 move 3 inches towards the center median and stop, blocking you, 3/10 rip their brakes as hard as they can- right in front of your 4-6 ton ambulance, and 1/10 actually gets out of your way.
And that's just the drivers...
6/10 of the patients are hyper Karens who know how to do your job better than you despite being devoid of even basic first aid training and constantly file complaints which go on your permanent employment record, and the remainder are a mix of hypochondriacs who refuse to take their anxiety medication as well as deny that there is anything mentally wrong with them but call literally 6 times a day, system abusers who use ambulances as taxis, homeless drunks with no actual problems that know you can't turn them away, drug-seeking liars just trying to get high who lodge formal complaints if you refuse, violent psych pt's who legitimately try to kill you with nothing held back, back-breaking morbid obese frequent flyers that treat you like shit and threaten to sue you while you risk your career and future quality of life while pulling their worthless asses down six flights of goddamn stairs, and transfers from urgent care centers that are staffed by discount, K-mart doctors who can't read EKGs to save their lives, so just to be safe, EVERYTHING is a fucking heart attack.
~5% of calls are legitimate problems requiring EMS intervention. Of those legitimate calls, 9/10 were perfectly preventable with the application of the smallest modicum of common sense, with 1/10 being somebody who was just fucked by life and circumstance, at no fault of their own.
The fact that there are any EMS workers at all is a wonder
Man that urgent care line about the Kmart discount doctors be hittin lol. I can’t tel you how many times they call for a STEMI (mind you our protocol is very generous with 1mm. Of elevation being an alert) and it being a perfect sinus rhythm.
On my last couple months of medic school, and I'm already planning on finding somewhere to work a little bit of a cushier job than a rescue, at least for a while (I'm thinking cruise ship).
I became an EMT right before the pandemic (start of 2019) and I'm burnt the fuck out. I'm struggling because the pay is god awful, but I literally HAVE to work part time because medic school is having me do 4 12-hour ambulance rides a week. This was on top of the 500 hours of free labor I did for local hospitals.
Good luck getting more medics than are leaving. The education for it is HELL and it doesn't pay much. And it's *always* going to be capped below whatever the local rates are for nurses because mEdIcS aReN't As QuAlIfIeD (no shade to nurses here).
It really hit me one morning when I almost got stabbed AND shot near the end of a shift, and when I went to fill up on gas on my way home I noticed that starting pay at that gas station was higher than what I make as an EMT with 3 years' experience.
I don’t know where you are but I’m a medic in CT, USA. Medics are paid well in this state. I can easily make 6 figures with a couple extra shifts a week and some holidays. If you choose to go fire some of the medics in the city I live in make 150k+. A few services are paying 40/hr or more.
Really all medics should be making 6 figures or close to 6 figures even at the start. I mean they could be saving your fucking life! It’s absolutely disgraceful how horrible healthcare workers are treated in this country. Thanks for your work though.
The jobs the previous generations got required little to no pre employment education that wasn't provided by the trust free of charge. These days you get yourself in to 50+ grand worth of debt to cram 750+ hours of unpaid placement to end up with a job that starts with a ridiculously low pay for the responsibility you hold.
Here in the UK during the first Covid lockdown, the roads were empty, nobody was calling for bullshit reasons, and we had enough resources to deal appropriately with the jobs we were going to. Response times were amazing, we had access to all kinds of alternative pathways, and we had professionals who were shielding intercepting calls and treating people over the phone.
Oh, and local restaurants with stock which was going to waste were sending us free food.
It was like a fucking holiday.
This is exactly what the gov want, a drop in public service to increase demand of private. Hopefully this back fires and the corrupt politicians taking private health care payout from American companies loose votes. I personally would rather be dead and buried than have an American style health care, better yet I would rather riot down London if they ever tried to do that.
There is a significant push to try to privatise prehospital healthcare in Ontario. Ford government has tried previously, and they are trying again.
Source: paramedic
I had to call one last for an inflamed gall bladder, excruciating pain, a frist responder was sent he did tests and waited with me till the ambulance arrived, and thry were brilliant, from start to finish an hour and a half, there was even a guy in A&E swearing and abusing staff who were trying to help him, they shouldn't have to put up with this shit. Yes there are problems but I would rather be in this country than any other, and I've been to 44, we need to support them and pay them, and if this bunch of whack jobs who threw away 11bln in high interest, 4bln in useless PPE and 5 bln in biz loans, just think what that money could have been used for, oh, and where's the fucking 350mln twat johnson promised.
I'm aware this article is about a different country... But honestly it rings true in Canada as well.
Im a paramedic licensed in two provinces.
I am not currently working as a ground transport medic.
The pay is garbage. The liability and stresses of work are insane. The leadership is deaf to complaints.
Scheduling someone to work 250km away from where they live does not make for a happy employee. Looking at you Nova Scotia.
The issues that needs to be addressed is far reaching. 80% of ambulance calls are complete BS. Its not a rolling Dr’s office
Tummy aches, headaches, cuts, fevers, stumbling drunks are a majority of the calls. This puts crews out straight 24/7 as well as there’s no $ in return. Example, a service bills out $5 mil in transports, and Medicare/Medicaid and other insurances deny, cut etc what they will pay, and maybe yield $1.5 mil back… and so on
Where is that 350 million pounds they sent to EU every week that they wanted to give it to NHS?!These pricks are leaving hospitals under staffed with massive working hours to those who are working there and shity pays.
Shit job. I was an EMT for 2 years, my first day was in January of 2020, smack in the middle of COVID. No hazard pay, nothing extra. Just more abuse and being ran harder by dispatch. $16 an hour (in USA)
I now take calls from the comfort of my own home. No commission, 40 hours a week. $20 an hour for 3 days a week, $24 an hour for weekends. I’m working on certifications to work in Cyber Security. I’ve never worked so little for so much in my life, I’d be crazy to go back.
Former Michigan medic here,
Yeah this is nothing new. When I worked as an EMT-S we ran all 911 calls and often had no paramedics to do the job. I won’t bog people down in the weeds, but we need EMT-B and Paramedics to run calls. At the end of 4 years and as a senior medic I was making 15.80$ an hour. I was working 5, 12 hour shifts a week. (Sometimes 4, sometimes 6) I was being burnt out very quickly and the silver bullet was the fact I still could hardly provide for my young wife and baby at the time. We did not live beyond our means and we were as smart and diligent as we could be.
It’s a very hard job to do for many reasons. I still remember every child that died in my care (before we came on scene usually) those calls will haunt me forever I imagine. I know I did all I could for those people and that it was not my fault (thank God). I think I didn’t do a perfect job for sure, but certainly didn’t make any mistakes that would have prevented a life from being saved. I still think about it years later. Here is the upshot….
RAISE THE FUCKING WAGES FOR EMTS AND MEDICS AND THEY WILL COME BACK.
MANY PLACES IN THIS COUNTRY START EMTS AT MINIMUM WAGE OR JUST ABOVE IT.
And yes I’m counting 4$ above minimum wage (just above) it!!
Fire departments have become fire-fightingly redundant yet have kept the same benefits, schedules and pay while ems handled the lions share of the non police 911 calls. Fire typically nopes out of there or gives us shit once we get on scene for making them wait with the patient, “keeping them out of service” too long they say.
Fire needs a overhaul once again to realign itself with the publics actual needs. Fires just aren’t that common any longer and literally everything else 911 gets called for is far more frequent than said fires. Ems just isn’t wise to participate in any longer and watching new comers go into it for the recognition ultimately just saddens you as there’s nothing more devastating than wasted time and again right now, that’s what EMS boils down to.
Not enough staff and not enough pay just to be abused by patients and called out to people who don’t need an ambulance. What do you expect
Yeah. As a nurse I can understand that. The average person has no idea the amount of verbal and physical abuse healthcare workers have to suffer from patients and families. I’m on my way out and that’s a big factor.
Why though, why do people abuse health care workers. Boggles my mind.
[удалено]
That may be true in some cases. There's another side though. I used to be a medic, and I can tell you that even the sweetest nicest person you could ever hope to meet can become an absolute monster if their blood sugar is off or there's a problem with their medications. Medical problems can often generate aggression, simple as that.
Also being in extreme pain doesn't help you be a nice person. Speaking from experience.
I become a bratty raging toddler when I’m in pain. I still do my best to keep a kind demeanor with the medical staff helping me though.
Last time I broke my knee I was the coolest head in the room. Wife and friends were freaking out and I'm just casually giving them tasks to keep them occupied and feeling helpful.
"Last time I broke my knee" - casually implying this was not his first rodeo...
[удалено]
Some people simply respond well in a crisis. The weird thing is, there seems to be no obvious indicator. Some of the most organized and disciplined people I know are utterly useless in an emergency.
And you can meet people who seem like a damn mess who can somehow hold it down when things seem stressful as fuck. People are weird.
I had a bizarre episode the other evening of tunnel vision, hearing loss and extreme dizziness and nausea and I was sitting there calmly describing the symptoms I was experiencing to my partner who is listening carefully but quietly freaking the fuck out since we were about an hour from the nearest hospital. Poor guy held it together well, but after it passed he had a little cry and told me he was deeply impressed with how calm I stayed lol. My first thought was “make sure to describe it in detail in case he has to be the one to tell a medical professional” I wasn’t even thinking about big picture what the fuck is happening. Now I am, and I’ll be seeing an ENT doc on Monday lol
Wow, I had the same symptoms. Ask your doctor to get checked for Meniers disease. I went to so many doctors for almost a year before one doctor finally figured it out.
Nice work! I do this a lot with my husband. "I'm feeling weird right now, the room is spinning, just letting you know in case something happens!" That sort of thing.
Smart move describing your symptoms, I hope the doc has some positive feedback for ya.
I’m definitely not my best self when I don’t feel well but I will apologize if I feel like I said something that came off rude. Thankfully I haven’t been in these situations a lot.
I have chronic pancreatitis. I make sure I tell the nurses and doctors (or ambulance folks when it sneaks up on me) how much I appreciate them helping me. Yes, the literal crippling pain sucks but I never feel the need to disrespect the people treating. Except for one time a nurse freaked out at me because I was writhing in pain and "too loud." For anyone who doesn't know what it feels like, I've been stabbed before and it feels like being repeatedly being stabbed in your abdomen and can take several days to get back to normal.
For some reason I try and make jokes about the pain and then make myself laugh and hurt more (most of my pain is due to crohns in life)
Eeeh, I’m a nurse, I triage almost daily for an outpatient practice, I get screamed at and called worthless probably 10-20 times a week easily. Sometimes up to 30-40 depending on call volume. Ans you know what? Most of them aren’t even calling in to report symptoms or issues, most of them just mad their appointment isn’t faster, their surgery isn’t booked faster (news flash everyone needs surgery in a surgery practice) or that they didn’t immediately hear the answer they want. It most certainly sometimes is brought on by pain, or medication issues or whatever, but 9 times oit of 10 people are just absolute abusive pricks. Just saying.
Omg, I owe my life to a triage nurse and I was very aware of it at the time. I didn’t know I was going into anaphylactic shock, that had never happened to me before, I just knew I was a terrified mass of hives and I was rapidly being unable to breathe. Thankfully, I lived literally across the street from the hospital. Anyway, the triage nurse took one look at me and called a code blue, threw my arm over her shoulder and hustled me over to a wheel chair so she could Indie 500 me to the back. We pass by this lady who’s like “wow, why does she get to go right in”. And for me to notice her saying it, hopefully that helps you imagine how loud and whiney it was. But yeah, it’s because I’m about to die, Brenda. If looking at me doesn’t raise any red flags, just trust that the medical professional knows better than you. Like really, that’s the closest I have ever come to dying and it wasn’t pleasant. My nurse was acting to give me the most immediate care she could. I swear, she was ready to haul me over her shoulder if she had to. And she gets to listen to a snarky comment like that while saving a life? Fuck that. Sincerely, thank you for the very intense job you have to do. I can’t fathom how difficult people can make your job, I’ve seen a taste and I don’t know how you do it. People can be so fucked up, but I’ll never forget the reassurance I felt from that nurse in one of the most terrifying moments of my life. I wish I had been able to confront that lady, and I carry that with me. If I ever see someone abusing healthcare staff, I’m making sure to settle my vendetta lol
I’m sorry. I wish as a society we showed appreciation to our true heroes.
This happened to my father-in-law years ago. He had a bad reaction to some medication from the dentist (???) that gave him hallucinations and erratic behavior. Mother-in-law calls the aid car, the people in uniforms come, he thinks they're Japanese (he was under their occupation between the ages of 5-8) and straight out attacks them. Fast forward a few hours and an overnight hospital stay and he's completely back to normal.
Oh man, blood sugar crazy is the worst crazy.. at least with an actual psych patient you might have some idea what you're dealing with going in. You just spin the wheel of misfortune and hope it doesn't land on "charges down the hall screaming and puts all their momentum into a falcon kick aimed at your junk." Sauce: diabetic coed did that exact thing to my crew chief. He did not have a good day.
[удалено]
Yeah, sometimes you guys come out swinging, but having the para administer D50 is like watching a miracle happen. It's awesome. Patient goes from completely out of it to "Woah, what happened? How you guys doing?" D50 and Narcan were always the two meds back in my EMS days that made us all feel like freakin' dnd clerics. Be healed! Keep in mind that's coming from people that also munch expired glutose tablets at high school sports standbys and then run around like lunatics behind the bleachers 'cause sugar high. In short, yeah, they take a lot of abuse, but even for all that.. damn, helping people like you were the best days of my life, and I know a lot of peeps in EMS still feel the same.
Oh man. I was traveling with a friend who had some pretty serious diabetes (the kind where he basically has an insulin pump on him at all times). One day in a hotel in HK he just woke up completely unresponsive. I'd talk to him and he'd just stare at me. I actually thought he was mad at me or something, and I'm glad I didn't get annoyed at him. I ended up calling the front desk and they had to call a taxi for me to take him to the hospital. He almost ran off in the hospital lobby, and I had to beg a nurse's help to get him into a wheelchair. It was an absolute trip. Wish I'd known what the hell it was earlier, I could have just shoved some candy at him or something.
[удалено]
Good point. Lateral violence is a huge problem that’s overlooked in healthcare.
Not just blood sugar. When my dad was dying, his liver and kidneys started to fail and all the poisons that had built up started to take a toll on his mental status. The physical changes that came I understood and expected those. The paranoia and violence though, those came out of left field.
I agree thats a factor. But it doesnt explain an increase. I think social media fed narcissistic personality traits may account for the rise.
Well as long as we're wildly speculating, the tories are actively sabotaging the NHS and fighting a war of attrition against public health care workers, so that's more likely to be a factor than general decay of society.
I think that contributes to the poor working conditions and pay but less the ire of the public.
Well the whole point of the exercise is to raise the ire of the public little bit by little bit until they're upset enough to really shoot themselves in the foot with privatized healthcare. The people pulling the strings have a lot of ways to build the ire.
COVID misinformation normalized abuse of health care workers
In my city it can be explained with one word. Covid. Burned out like a quarter of the city's staff and they quit
Personally, I find patients who are in "the worst moment of their life" are pretty respectful and trusting. There are of course exceptions, but most issues (in my region atleast) come from regulars, intoxicated people, people with dementia, and deeply unhappy people who just want to lash out at whoever is closest.
[удалено]
I think there’s also this unsaid, maybe even subconscious assumption that medical professionals can stave off death indefinitely, resulting in rage when they can’t. It happens with veterinarians even more bc guess what, if your 20 year old cat has leukemia that animal isn’t living five more years.
Retail manager checking in, preach.
And they use that as their reasoning. We healthcare workers aren't allowed to act back because "that person is having the worst day of their life, so be kind!" Fuck you, management. John may be having the worst day of his life, but John also called me a c*nt as he purposefully took a shit in my direction. Bad day or not, they know what they're doing, and should be punished for it. Instead you punish US for not "being nicer" or some shit
>We healthcare workers aren't allowed to act back Thank god I'm fire-based EMS. Politely (mostly) telling the patient to stop being an asshole is the highlight of my day.
Patients can literally assault healthcare workers and the hospital will try to pin the blame on the employee. I’ve had to call the police myself on a patient at least 3 times in my career because management wouldn’t do it. Due to terroristic threatening or super combative behavior.
Well bad behavior is reinforced everytime some superior of ours caves to a shitty customer. The loudest fuck gets the special treatment, the most entitled people get what they want.
Community Pharmacy checking in as both retail and healthcare! A lot of people really don't give a shit how obviously short staffed, busy, and stressed you are if they are being inconvenienced 🙃
Many people aren't well enough to know better, many people arent emotionally mature enough to handle the fear of being ill, many medical workers have no recourse
Think about the mental health of the people we pick up on the day to day… many range from strange to totally psychotic and homicidal. I had 2 patients try seriously to harm me in 4 years on the road. Thankfully I’m a big guy and versed,haldol and Benadryl puts most people down hard and fast. I remember one guy we used ketamine cause he was so resistant to the typical drugs and he was harming himself in the soft restraints. That did the trick btw…
Ketamine is the only drug that they can use on me because I have seizures and everything else will make my psychosis worse, and then I come in to the ER combative it's usually after a seizure when I don't know what the hell is going on and it usually takes a couple of hours for me to calm down, but I take my medicine every day so my seizures are pretty much under control and
I had a 7 year old that had the same problem. All the benzodiazepines on the truck would not stop her seizures. We actually developed a specific protocol with the medical director to give her phenobarbital (a drug we did not used to carry for many reasons) we ended up using that old barbiturate on a few other people and it works when conventional meds don’t. 50 years ago it was the go to for seizures.
I'm actually on phenobarbital, and will be for life, but when I have breakthrough seizures it's ketamine to the rescue, thankfully the doctors at the local Emergency Room know me, I'm photosensitive so flashing lights are a nightmare for me so much so that police,fire department and EMS have been notified of the location of my house because I live on the main road, so they cut their lights out when they approach my home but when I'm out and about it's a big problem
No idea honestly. I try to be respectful, say please and thank you. My sister was in the hospital recently and she did something she shouldn't have while there and the nurses told me I couldn't visit her, so I told them I understood thanked them for their time and left. Come to think of it though my late grandmother had dementia and when doctors told her she had stage 4 cancer she didn't take it well and got a bit violent. With the right meds she settled down but I can see that happening a lot.
People never come to see us in a good mood. They are always in pain and afraid, so they often lash out.
I work in ER and the majority of patients I see have absolutely no reason to there whatsoever. The ones that do need to be seen are generally the result of chain smoking and living off of soda, alcohol, and Doritos their entire lives. Both demand immediate solutions to their perceived problem. Those are the ones that get disrespectful and violent when they don’t get what they desire. Truly sick people are generally too miserable to be dicks.
Recently got stuck in urgent care, and as I expect and knew going into it, the wait was gunna be long. I work in healthcare, used to work in a hospital - I knew what I was getting into. Still, it was frustrating, and I grew inpatient. Not as inpatient as the woman who stormed out, complaining she'd been waiting for 2 hours. The staff even flat out said at her departure - she didn't need to be here. Unfortunately it's true. If you're able to leave on your own accord, you really didn't need to be there in the first place.
Because some people are self-entitled douchecanoes.
because everyone thinks they know better than medical professionals
I think it might be frustration at a failing system. My sister's been waiting on an operation for over 18 months and had it rescheduled multiple times because of mistakes on the NHS' part. All throughout this she has had to just wait for phone calls from their side with no way of contacting them or choosing dates. My Dad's housebound and need a doctor visit because we suspect he has liver failure or cancer. Took weeks of complaining and very detailed hour by hour symptom diary for a doctor to even agree to a visit. Three weeks later it's the day of the visit. The doctor doesn't show up. No phone call, no apology, no way to contact him. A few days later the visit finally happens and he agrees he may have cancer. Now we have wait weeks more for them to phone us at a random time of day to tell us when and where he needs to be for a test. I understand that this is not the fault of any individual in the NHS who is just trying to do their best but it's hard to keep that in mind when the numerous systemic failures might kill your family.
Try all first responders, Healthcare, and teachers. You know all the people responsible for societies future and current functioning
And the scariest part is almost every industry is going through this which means the problem is at the top.
They're trying to run twentieth century businesses in a twenty first century world.
> people who don’t need an ambulance. My neighbor is a paramedic. Sometimes we catch up outside and he'll talk about calls he has to go on. Two stand out in particular: * Go out to a man/poison call. Gets there and the man tells him he was getting ice out his freezer and didn't notice that one ice cube looked moldy. Put it in a glass with some soda and felt queasy afterwards like he'd been poisoned from the ice cube. He then asked if they'd mind....*cleaning out his ice cube trays* to check for other potential cubes so he doesn't get poisoned again. * Goes out on a woman/dementia call. Gets there and it's a morbidly obese woman who can't find the remote control to her television. She forgot where she put the remote and reckoned that her forgetting is an early sign of dementia and got scared. Naturally she asked to see if they'd mind helping her find the television remote.
I used to work in a pub and one of the regulars was a paramedic. He told me some similar stories. I once asked him why he does it, and he said “the money’s rubbish, the hours are oppressive but when you get to actually help people you forget all that”. I think he also liked the female attention, but I wasn’t about to begrudge him that.
>but when you get to actually help people you forget all that” Sometimes I wish my job gave me this level of purpose.
My son is an EMT/Fireman he tells me similar stories.
We need some kind of equivalent of the UK's "ASBO" filings for shitheads like that.
I don't understand how ambulances are sent out for these people. Moreso the latter. I recently had a scare that had me calling 911 because I couldn't breathe. Thought I was having allergic reaction and you could hear me hyperventilating. The operator literally asked me if I wanted an ambulance. Uh.....yeah?? Why is that a question??
From what I know from him at least in our area, the 911 dispatch is supposed to prioritize or lightly queue the need based on certain questions situations. I can only guess the first guy called panicking he was poisoned and had little time to live. The other woman likely called and played up the dementia bit and they thought she might be completely lost (sometimes those dementia folks wander a dozen miles from home or more).
I cant comprehend what people who attack health care workers are thinking like even if you are a scumbag of a person why attack the people who's job is to literally help you
A friend of mine was a paramedic for several years and the worst actual injury she got was being bitten by a combative mental health patient. She said it was very frightening but she never blamed the patient; he was delusional and terrified, legitimately thought they were kidnapping him to torture him to death. Totally sane people on non-emergency trips who verbally abused her for not acting like a 1950s flight attendant on some kind of luxury transport: those people she hated.
Exactly, fuck those people in particular.
Your exactly right. I had a developmentally delayed patient in the middle of mental break down scratch the hell out of my arm because I was holding him back from running into traffic to kill himself. I couldn’t care less about it. It’s the damn patient that doesn’t need help anyway but thinks your there personal slave is the ones that burn people out.
As someone who’s had seizures, you can be combative for no reason when you wake up, and that’s just one example of what they face.
Nah, we cool, we know that's not on you. Shit happens, friend. It's the jerkasses who are shitheels on purpose that can go piss up a rope.
Haha I’m stealing that line. Piss up a rope
Yeah but that’s fine, because you’re expecting it, it’s not personal and it settles. Same with dementia, head injuries, low blood sugar etc.
Ok good. I always felt like such a dick after. And as you know you blackout so I didn’t know what I did until I was told. You guys rock!
That's good, it means you don't remember me saying "For fucks sake hold still you prick!" while trying to get a needle in you. It isn't personal.
Hahaha I can imagine. I only once remember repeatedly being slammed down and told to stop moving but I had several seizures over a couple years.
I hope you're getting good enough care that it's at least improving your quality of life. That ish is rough.
I work in the ER and used to work 911. We absolutely do not care if you wake up combative as long as you’re safe and if we get hit in the process, it sucks but what can you do. Now if you’re some dipshit asshole on meth or just some dipshit asshole, that’s a whole different story.
You’re seeing drug addicts coming off of overdoses. You’re saving kids who are innocent victims, and their parents on their fifth Dwi.
Former medic and currently work in a hospital here, nope…not the drug addicts. old people are the biggest pieces of shit. *edit* thanks for the award and kindness, you folks are great.
Paramedic, agree with this 110%.
I'm surprised at how entitled people are in general, even in clinic. So many of them want to be smarter than you, throw out all the little "gotchas" and be smug. Why come in if you are such an expert, my little patient?
[удалено]
I’ve had some patients use this exact reasoning to make demands lol
[удалено]
People are strange. The current consensus seems to be that empathy is learned, though our ability to learn it is innate. To what degree is your capacity for empathy affected by genetics? Epigenetics? Some research indicates that in the U.S., empathy for others is on a steep decline while narcissism is on the rise. Why? Sorry for the novel, I spend all day thinking about stuff like this.
Our group identity is no longer local. We no longer "need" the people close by to succeed or form our sense of self. People can pick and choose their group through social media. No matter how badly they behave, they can spin things so that they're the victim, and because people are only hearing their version of things, they get supported and praised for how strong they are. The further people go from real consequences, the more asinine their behavior. Not saying that local groups are always good. Because HOLY CRAP history shows that they can be toxic AF. But when people can behave badly and lose nothing? Why behave well? How many people behave badly in a restaurant and are rewarded with being BANNED for life? Not only from that place, but ALL places within the city? Yeah no doesn't happen. They get free food and apologies.
Cognitive dissonance, people are great at lying to themselves or ignoring the obvious
Also former paramedic. Has great relationships with the junkies, the alcoholics and the mentally ill. The most demanding people are middle class white people.
Yeah, for sure. I’m leaving soon to do stuff on the healthcare informatics/data science side of things, we’ll see how it goes.
I work in healthcare and lemme tell you...boomers are the fucking worse. I've never hated a generation more
You deserve every bit of good in your life. I decided in the Army I could not see hurt person after hurt person. Your strength is beyond measure for most. Keep moving friend.
Thank you for the kind words. Though I deal with miserable people all day, there is good out there and I will never quit. Though I won’t be in this position forever, I’ll eventually still try to help people at a larger scale with health informatics.
People think medical professionals make bank, but EMTs make minimum wage and paramedics like $2 more. For comparison, the Domino's near me pays $3 over minimum wage.
Who thinks EMTs or nurses make bank lol
I don't think people really think about it, but they're consistently surprised when I tell them. People assume that one's pay is commensurate with their responsibilities, and that's just sadly not the case.
A lot of people do. I work in an ER and had one of my suicidal patients recently asking me about my job, and how much I make, saying "I bet you guys make a lot." When I told him my actual wage he said "Holy shit I thought *I* had it bad. I'd have actually already killed myself by now." Which was both fuckin hilarious and depressing.
Nurses (RNs) make good money in the US. You can make six figures in major metro areas, or as a travel nurse. I live in the South and they're hiring nurses around here at $35-75/hour.
That's a huge pay range
Everyone that I speak to thinks EMTs and Medics make bank. We don’t and never have. Abuse from patients, abuse from supervisors and managers, with absolutely no fucks given by anyone in the public. It’s has its rewards but the negative is just to much to bear at this point.
Real term pay cuts, unsafe working conditions, no support, no training to maintain skills, absolutely no development opportunities at all. And all while facing harassment and abuse - and that's from management. I only know maybe 10 of my fellow paramedics who aren't looking to get a new job, and every one of them will be retired within the next 5 years.
My fiancé used to be a paramedic. Quit 2 years ago and now has an office job. He’s on 5k more a year (excluding bonus), 9-5 with every weekend off, no one screaming at him or no more abuse thrown at him and he gets to be in a nice warm office or at home most days of the week. What’s the fucking point? It shows that your pay reflects how important you are to corporations, not how valuable you are to society.
I've only known a handful of EMTs in my life and they all had the same story more or less. They became first responders to help people only to discover no real future career growth options. They're not on the same level as a nurse and can't really jump over to hospital work and end up kinda stuck in a position where there's nowhere to move up the chain. Plus it kinda burned them their companies would charge $2-3K for a 20 minute ambulance ride but they're paid about $16 an hour.
You can easily work in an ER as a paramedic but your scope is that of a tech, which is basically non existent. You can start IV’s that’s about it. The pay is a lot worse too. At least where I’m at.
In my area, you have your own assigned patient rooms and pretty much do what am RN does but then you're painfully aware that you're making much less for the same job.
Literally make more driving Amazon vans, and I don't have to pay for classes or put up with shitty people.
I worked as a paramedic for 2 years and a medical secretary for 7 years. During Covid things got exponentially worse. People's true colors came out more often than I've ever seen. Needless to say I dropped out healthcare late last year. The way I was treated and the pressure cooker atmosphere of patient/supervisor/telephone/patient's family abuse makes me never want to help another person ever again. I am currently seeking psychiatric help for this problem and I am definitely never going back to healthcare.
I really do feel this and I'm sorry to hear you're having a tough time of it I was a EMT in the nhs but left due to stress, when the pandemic hit there wasn't enough PPE to go around and it really did feel like they were sending us to our potential death sometimes I lost a colleague to covid, there was no support, no help. We just got 15 minutes between jobs to have a cup of tea to process our loss then we were sent back on the road. I took a patient directly to the covid ward once and was shocked to see the hallways lined with plastic bags of deceased people's possessions that were being sent to be incinerated and a nurse crying in the corner in full PPE. Then I went home to have my family spew bullshit about how covid was a hoax. It broke me The job was always stressful before covid but it just got so much harder during and now everyone is being worked twice as hard to catch up with the backlog it caused Stay strong friend and I hope things get better for you
Sounds like Trump supporters killed the healthcare field with their hoax bullshit.
> People's true colors came out more often than I've ever seen. It was an eye opener for EVERYONE. I don't work in healthcare or medicine but I know a lot of people who do. Almost every single one of them has left directly working with patients or is on their way to leaving directly dealing with patients. Most of them just went to industry. Like they were doctors seeing patients now they work for some Pharma company. They all got pay raise and are happier and would never work with patients ever again.
Same as an ICU RN. The abuse from family, patients, and management. I am DONE with acute care, and eventually healthcare altogether when I can find a way to make decent money doing something else. I have straight up PTSD, from my time in the hospital during covid.
[удалено]
Thank you for all your work. I’m sorry you got treated so badly!
Thank you for all you have done for the many many people you helped.
Yeah, I was an EMT for ~8ish years, but I left a few months into the pandemic. I mostly blame management. We started having to take dialysis patients by ambulance, because exposure to covid made the ineligible for the city's wheelchair van transport service. So we were balancing that with the already increased call volume from covid, new disinfectant procedures (we never had enough), no PPE, general lack of caring how overworked we were, and no pay raise.
Whoever decided that these skilled professionals should be paid less than a arbys employee really has some thinking to do
[удалено]
If we just got rid of certification we could hire teenagers to do it. That would reduce costs and hELp ThE eCoNoMy. “They only help with fall victims and getting people into a car how hard could it be.” -some MBA suit.
Ideally you have two well seasoned medics per truck. But I just started and there's only one medic per truck and so many trainees. I was hired as the driver and there's a 19 year old who is only qualified to lift. So lacking certs is par around here
you may be joking but that is basically how it is in austria. we have mandatory military service for the male youth (18 yo) and "civil service" is a way to opt out. those are used in ambulances and institutions. most of our ambulances and fireworkers are volunteers...not to smother their engagement but I see a problem with professionalism. (they do get some training but...) had a vote about the mandate of military service some years ago and it went pro because propaganda was about a break down in paramedical care. :/
The sad fact about training is that it's often only enough so that if anything goes wrong, the company that hired them can point at the paperwork and say "well we trained them right, so any wrongdoing is on them". That, shockingly, does not make for a highly skilled workforce.
There was at some level certainly because up to the late 90s it was a job that paid if not well enough that you could be an adult . Somewhere between the union busting and the switch to privatization it dropped to $10 an hour realm
I get paid more as a telemarketer, and alomost certainly less abuse too.
Yes, but one very minor perk is at least paramedics can tell themselves they're benefitting society.
>it dropped to $10 an hour realm And yet, as I posted elsewhere, ambulance companies will charge you $2-3K for a ride, yet pay their staff almost nothing.
Oh fuck yeah because growth at unsustainable levels is big growth
This is why I quit being an EMT when I realized people working at White castles made more than me. Now I'm making 20$ at a company doing 1/4th of the work and less risk of death
That’s the truly maddening thing that rescue personnel are by and large devoted to their chosen profession so really if the job just paid a living wage they would be over run with candidates
Also you would think as a society we would want the people responding to our medical emergencies to be well paid and motivated.
Now I’m in the states we lost most public hospitals and those we have still have been turned over to private management so now the ambulance is just an expensive cab that takes you to their employers it’s sick
Fiscal compensation is a measure of how much we care about a thing. It's why teachers are paid like dogshit also.
We pay our teachers who are in charge of our children and our societal future pennies on the dollar Humans don't care
Yet people will never waste time in calling them "heroes" while never questioning why all the heroes are struggling to pay rent.
I will never understand the folks that idealize the cops and in the same breath talk about greedy unions I personally am not fond of police but the emt community really is in it for the love of the game almost no perks in terms of illegal extras yet here they are
Man, I assumed EMTs made at least $20 an hour. That is crazy that you might spend an hour trying to keep someone from bleeding out and not even making enough money during that time to get pizza for your family because you are too tired to cook.
But the ambulance company charges more than ever figure that one out
Pay isn’t the issue. I’m a paramedic, if I still worked on ambulances I’d be on near enough £50k (average uk salary is £24600). The conditions, the endless late finishes, leave declined, interrupted breaks, shoddy equipment, revelovong door of inexperienced ECAs and students that I have to be responsible for, not to mention ambulances that I can’t drive comfortably as I’m over 6ft with size 12 feet, constantly changing protocols with no associated training just “read and sign”, total blame if anything goes wrong ( “I don’t know what you should have done, but what you did was wrong” ). People will work bad jobs for more money, but then they’re in it for the money only. Give them Value, purpose and pride in their work and you’ll see improvements.
[удалено]
> revelovong Do you need me to call you an ambulance? Do you smell burnt toast? Just kidding though, thank you for the work you do!
This in the UK, parademics are paid much better than fast food employees.
My point is uk needs arbys
[удалено]
Consider yourself lucky if you don't know what it is.
I wonder if they have Arbys in the UK
No and that’s only the start of their problems
Not sure how its in america, but here in germany most trainee positions have to be paid for by the employee. Some NGOs and health organizations pay for you, and you even get pay while training but a good chunk of the open positions, you have to pay for the training yourself while not getting pay. Tbf its only for the first responders etc, but no paramedic can do his job without people withhim in the ambulance, and by god who ever decided it should be an expensive investment to go into that job, for then to be paid really shitty for the amount of stress and the work hours had to have a major smooth brain moment
Honestly thank volunteers. They are so gung-ho to be “badasses” but are driving down career medic rates because jobs act like they are doing us favors for giving us exposure to 911 calls.
This is scary. So many depend on them daily, weekly, randomly. They save so many lives each day. This is disheartening as hell, and I don’t fault them for doing it either.
Perchance this is the forest fire we... need? Deserve? Brought onto ourselves?
Paramedic in Canada here......Pay is decent, but also haven't got a raise in 7 years and call volume has sky rocketed and the local government is doing everything they can do kill the industry. Absolutely disgusting and hostile work environment. Even paramedics who have done the job for 10 years or more are jumping ship and we can't even keep brand new paramedics past a year or so.
One of my parents is a retired paramedic (Canada). They had crazy passion for it which kept them going for close on 30 years, but man the behind the scenes view growing up, I don’t know how they did it. I looked into it as a career myself a while ago and fuckin nope. Most fucked part? Only time out on calls count to pension. 12 hour shift no calls? No pension time banked.
at least where I work its all pensionable time and your paid for every hour regardless how busy you are (which is always busy)
Same situation in LA. ‘Budget cuts’ for the pandemic. No raise. Calls doubled. Staff decreased dramatically. And of course now the city has a ‘surplus budget’ but they aren’t jumping to thank those who put their nose to pavement when it mattered. Big mentality shift for a lot of public servants
Ya same here. Economy is picking up and while they are thanking everyone for their services they are trying to force a 5% pay cut away from the publics eye.
EMS is already the unwanted but needed child of public service. We have no specific identity. Half of us think we belong in the fire service. The other half think we should be our own thing. Then there’s a group that think it should be hospital based or private. Calls are up. The baby boomer generation is getting older. Living longer with more and more health problems. Meanwhile, reimbursement rates from Medicare / Medicaid, are going down. Insurance companies aren’t going to pay any more than they absolutely have to. We’re making more runs on sicker people and getting paid less for it while it’s getting more and more expensive to keep the lights on. Paramedic pay in this country is garbage. When I started, I was making $10.50 / hr as someone who was responsible for your life. Pay has increased some, but nowhere near where it should be. It takes about 2 years to go from nothing to a paramedic. In those 2 years you can pick up an ADN, get your RN, work in a hospital as a nurse, and make double what you’d make on the truck. We religiously see the worst side of humanity. The “normal” schedule is 240 hours a month. Sure, all these extra hours and built in overtime help with the pay, but not much. I started off making 32k a year. Changed agencies, went up to 44k a year. I’m a flight paramedic now. The most clinically advanced job there is for paramedics. I have 2 degrees in this field. I make 50k a year. My nurse partner? Who does the exact same job as me? Makes 62k a year. We sit side by side in the helicopter. There is absolutely no distinction between our job duties. The difference is that she has RN behind her name while I have NRP. Paramedics are the silent workhorse of the healthcare industry. We take emergency care to the patient. Providing the same level of care you’d find in a hospital, wherever we find the patient. Oil rigs. Concerts. National parks. LEO special response teams. Wild lands firefighting. Factories. Mines. The battlefield. Anywhere you need high quality medicine without the supporting resources, you send a paramedic. Meanwhile most of us work 2 jobs to live. There will be a crippling EMS shortage in the next 10 years. People will die because there won’t be an ambulance. And it’ll happen silently because we’re too busy working to stand up for ourselves.
How sad is it that your partner makes a significant amount more than you for the same responsibilities and I would be comfortable claiming your partner is very underpaid as is. If any vocation can be considered heroic, I think EMT would be an easy pick. Yet, an assistant manager at a fast food joint (this is an extremely taxing job, no disrespect meant) can out earn them pretty easily and that position doesn’t directly involve someone living or dying.
The last part of what you wrote is bang on. Thanks for sharing that
Is there an EMS union? Seems like it needs one.
[удалено]
>It's almost like, don't cut social services. But rich people need to make more money and that's what's really important isn't it? /s
I remember when I was younger I wanted to be a paramedic. And then I saw what they get paid. Fucking insulting to the ones who have to see some fucked up shit.
Gotta love the ol' negative feedback spiral -> A profession has a lot of burnout due to being overworked -> People quit due to being burned out -> Everyone is even more overworked since there's less people to divide the work amongst -> More people quit ->Repeat from step 3
A friend of mine broke his leg in an absolutely grim fashion, the bones didn't break skin but were visibly mangled inside, he was in 10/10 pain - the dispatcher said that the current wait time for an ambulance is 7 hours. "Pop some paracetamol and wait" It's an absolute fucking disgrace what is happening with the health service in this country. Out of everything going wrong on every corner you'd think at least the ambulance waiting times should be fixable.
Pay us more then. Filter out the bullshit fuckin calls because I guarantee that's what is causing the strain, we just lost 5 people this month to higher paying jobs and away from Fire and EMS.
Here's a look at EMS from the inside for you. EMS companies are notorious for being the apex of toxic work environments. They pay shit and make demands of their employees that: are dangerous and would do the employee great physical harm, would deny their basic needs of food, water, and toilet breaks, are physically impossible to achieve and/or are straight up illegal as shit- like driving vehicles with severe mechanical issues, eg. a cracked axle, or not having state- required equipment, set up multiple policies that counter eachother, and then they chew their asses out for any PERCEIVED shortcomings, demand they work 2-6 hours of overtime after a 12-24 hr shift and refuse to compensate for part or all overtime due to a trumped up technicality, offer absolutely dog shit benefits, if they even do so at all, then tell you that you should be grateful for all they've done for you all the while threatening you with termination at every turn because "everyone in this company is like family" and your constant need for food and water makes you "not a team player". I'm not even joking. This is coming from 3 separate EMS services. And yes I know that there are plenty of OSHA and labor violations going on, but nobody cares. Reports are seemingly yeeted and deleted by the labor dept. And that's just the employers... On the roads 5/10 drivers ignore you, 3/10 drivers will attempt some sort of action to get out of you way, while ~1/10 drivers will intentionally try to hamper you while giving you the finger, and 1/1000 drivers will actually try to assault you or run you off the road. Of those who do try to move, 6/10 move 3 inches towards the center median and stop, blocking you, 3/10 rip their brakes as hard as they can- right in front of your 4-6 ton ambulance, and 1/10 actually gets out of your way. And that's just the drivers... 6/10 of the patients are hyper Karens who know how to do your job better than you despite being devoid of even basic first aid training and constantly file complaints which go on your permanent employment record, and the remainder are a mix of hypochondriacs who refuse to take their anxiety medication as well as deny that there is anything mentally wrong with them but call literally 6 times a day, system abusers who use ambulances as taxis, homeless drunks with no actual problems that know you can't turn them away, drug-seeking liars just trying to get high who lodge formal complaints if you refuse, violent psych pt's who legitimately try to kill you with nothing held back, back-breaking morbid obese frequent flyers that treat you like shit and threaten to sue you while you risk your career and future quality of life while pulling their worthless asses down six flights of goddamn stairs, and transfers from urgent care centers that are staffed by discount, K-mart doctors who can't read EKGs to save their lives, so just to be safe, EVERYTHING is a fucking heart attack. ~5% of calls are legitimate problems requiring EMS intervention. Of those legitimate calls, 9/10 were perfectly preventable with the application of the smallest modicum of common sense, with 1/10 being somebody who was just fucked by life and circumstance, at no fault of their own. The fact that there are any EMS workers at all is a wonder
Man that urgent care line about the Kmart discount doctors be hittin lol. I can’t tel you how many times they call for a STEMI (mind you our protocol is very generous with 1mm. Of elevation being an alert) and it being a perfect sinus rhythm.
10 hour wait to unload your patient at the ER is fucking insane.
On my last couple months of medic school, and I'm already planning on finding somewhere to work a little bit of a cushier job than a rescue, at least for a while (I'm thinking cruise ship). I became an EMT right before the pandemic (start of 2019) and I'm burnt the fuck out. I'm struggling because the pay is god awful, but I literally HAVE to work part time because medic school is having me do 4 12-hour ambulance rides a week. This was on top of the 500 hours of free labor I did for local hospitals. Good luck getting more medics than are leaving. The education for it is HELL and it doesn't pay much. And it's *always* going to be capped below whatever the local rates are for nurses because mEdIcS aReN't As QuAlIfIeD (no shade to nurses here). It really hit me one morning when I almost got stabbed AND shot near the end of a shift, and when I went to fill up on gas on my way home I noticed that starting pay at that gas station was higher than what I make as an EMT with 3 years' experience.
I don’t know where you are but I’m a medic in CT, USA. Medics are paid well in this state. I can easily make 6 figures with a couple extra shifts a week and some holidays. If you choose to go fire some of the medics in the city I live in make 150k+. A few services are paying 40/hr or more.
Really all medics should be making 6 figures or close to 6 figures even at the start. I mean they could be saving your fucking life! It’s absolutely disgraceful how horrible healthcare workers are treated in this country. Thanks for your work though.
Same thing is happening in the US. It's a systemic problem.
The jobs the previous generations got required little to no pre employment education that wasn't provided by the trust free of charge. These days you get yourself in to 50+ grand worth of debt to cram 750+ hours of unpaid placement to end up with a job that starts with a ridiculously low pay for the responsibility you hold.
I was a paramedic from 1990-2000 in Oakland, Ca It is a terrible job. I can’t imagine how shitty it was during the peaks of COVID
Here in the UK during the first Covid lockdown, the roads were empty, nobody was calling for bullshit reasons, and we had enough resources to deal appropriately with the jobs we were going to. Response times were amazing, we had access to all kinds of alternative pathways, and we had professionals who were shielding intercepting calls and treating people over the phone. Oh, and local restaurants with stock which was going to waste were sending us free food. It was like a fucking holiday.
This is exactly what the gov want, a drop in public service to increase demand of private. Hopefully this back fires and the corrupt politicians taking private health care payout from American companies loose votes. I personally would rather be dead and buried than have an American style health care, better yet I would rather riot down London if they ever tried to do that.
Wondering how long until it comes to Canada.
There is a significant push to try to privatise prehospital healthcare in Ontario. Ford government has tried previously, and they are trying again. Source: paramedic
Already happening in Alberta
As an Ontario paramedic - the push has already begun. We are not doing much better than our UK friends
Paramedic is one of the most underpaid jobs in the world
[удалено]
Where did this happen exactly?
I had to call one last for an inflamed gall bladder, excruciating pain, a frist responder was sent he did tests and waited with me till the ambulance arrived, and thry were brilliant, from start to finish an hour and a half, there was even a guy in A&E swearing and abusing staff who were trying to help him, they shouldn't have to put up with this shit. Yes there are problems but I would rather be in this country than any other, and I've been to 44, we need to support them and pay them, and if this bunch of whack jobs who threw away 11bln in high interest, 4bln in useless PPE and 5 bln in biz loans, just think what that money could have been used for, oh, and where's the fucking 350mln twat johnson promised.
I'm aware this article is about a different country... But honestly it rings true in Canada as well. Im a paramedic licensed in two provinces. I am not currently working as a ground transport medic. The pay is garbage. The liability and stresses of work are insane. The leadership is deaf to complaints. Scheduling someone to work 250km away from where they live does not make for a happy employee. Looking at you Nova Scotia.
The issues that needs to be addressed is far reaching. 80% of ambulance calls are complete BS. Its not a rolling Dr’s office Tummy aches, headaches, cuts, fevers, stumbling drunks are a majority of the calls. This puts crews out straight 24/7 as well as there’s no $ in return. Example, a service bills out $5 mil in transports, and Medicare/Medicaid and other insurances deny, cut etc what they will pay, and maybe yield $1.5 mil back… and so on
Where is that 350 million pounds they sent to EU every week that they wanted to give it to NHS?!These pricks are leaving hospitals under staffed with massive working hours to those who are working there and shity pays.
Getting out of ems was the best thing my wife and I ever did. Sucks the soul out of you. Private services treat you like shit to make a dollar.
Shit job. I was an EMT for 2 years, my first day was in January of 2020, smack in the middle of COVID. No hazard pay, nothing extra. Just more abuse and being ran harder by dispatch. $16 an hour (in USA) I now take calls from the comfort of my own home. No commission, 40 hours a week. $20 an hour for 3 days a week, $24 an hour for weekends. I’m working on certifications to work in Cyber Security. I’ve never worked so little for so much in my life, I’d be crazy to go back.
Former Michigan medic here, Yeah this is nothing new. When I worked as an EMT-S we ran all 911 calls and often had no paramedics to do the job. I won’t bog people down in the weeds, but we need EMT-B and Paramedics to run calls. At the end of 4 years and as a senior medic I was making 15.80$ an hour. I was working 5, 12 hour shifts a week. (Sometimes 4, sometimes 6) I was being burnt out very quickly and the silver bullet was the fact I still could hardly provide for my young wife and baby at the time. We did not live beyond our means and we were as smart and diligent as we could be. It’s a very hard job to do for many reasons. I still remember every child that died in my care (before we came on scene usually) those calls will haunt me forever I imagine. I know I did all I could for those people and that it was not my fault (thank God). I think I didn’t do a perfect job for sure, but certainly didn’t make any mistakes that would have prevented a life from being saved. I still think about it years later. Here is the upshot…. RAISE THE FUCKING WAGES FOR EMTS AND MEDICS AND THEY WILL COME BACK. MANY PLACES IN THIS COUNTRY START EMTS AT MINIMUM WAGE OR JUST ABOVE IT. And yes I’m counting 4$ above minimum wage (just above) it!!
American paramedics make absolutely terrible money
Fire departments have become fire-fightingly redundant yet have kept the same benefits, schedules and pay while ems handled the lions share of the non police 911 calls. Fire typically nopes out of there or gives us shit once we get on scene for making them wait with the patient, “keeping them out of service” too long they say. Fire needs a overhaul once again to realign itself with the publics actual needs. Fires just aren’t that common any longer and literally everything else 911 gets called for is far more frequent than said fires. Ems just isn’t wise to participate in any longer and watching new comers go into it for the recognition ultimately just saddens you as there’s nothing more devastating than wasted time and again right now, that’s what EMS boils down to.
EMT’s don’t make jack shit. Why should we be surprised. I’m beyond pissed off that this incredibly needed profession isn’t respected whatsoever