Medic school, worth it?

[Palladin]

Epic

 

[SSW]

The only thing that I'd quibble with is that despite the tough times municipal EMTs and medics are going through (whether they work for an FD or not) it's better than being in the private service. One thing that working for a municipal service offers is stability. We have people who have been medics for 25 years and were EMTs before that. If you're good, experience makes you better.

We are in agreement about the stability. I had to make this decision recently. I have been on LFD for 12 years. Was offerred a much better paying job, for what I consider to be a top notch private company. After experiencing the sell outs and mergers ambulance companies in the 1990's, stability was huge for me.

I made the decision that the stability of the lower pay, but with stronger stability was a better choice for my family and myself. Otherwise I would risk that stability for higher pay, but for how long?? That made my decision. Well that and being able to do fire duty as well as EMS added something new to my carreer. I really like the mix and it works well for me. We not only rotate between the Rescue and Apparatus, when assigned to the Rescue we go to all fires in any district of our city. So selfishly this keeps burnout at bay for me.

So we actually agree.

 

[Garys]

We are in agreement about the stability. I had to make this decision recently. I have been on LFD for 12 years. Was offerred a much better paying job, for what I consider to be a top notch private company. After experiencing the sell outs and mergers ambulance companies in the 1990's, stability was huge for me.

Some of the smaller FDs pay significantly less than we do. You do get the better schedule as well as the Heart Lung and Cancer laws, but we're in Group 4 now, so that's not a factor. Still, if you study a bit, and take the promotional exams you can advance fairly quickly. I know some of our guys left for FDs and after a few years are LTs and CPTs. I think all the classes and tests we have to take to keep our certifications help make studying a bit of a habit.

As to the privates, there is not a lot of stability. Alert lost the VA contract, which went to Brewster. AMR lost the Partners contract which went to Fallon. I know that AMR got rid of the critical care transfer trucks after that and laid off medics and nurses. I'd imagine that Alert cut back some. I heard that Fallon had a big shake up because of the lowering of Medicaid and Medicare reinbursement rates. A bunch of supervisors were bumped back onto trucks.