Why You Shouldn't Go Into EMS

hey guys my name's sam and welcome to prepmatic in this week's video i'm going to tell you why you don't want to go into ems [Music] you guys know me i am a huge proponent of ems and i want to see more people in this profession however this is not for everybody and one of the biggest disservices we can do to prospective emts and paramedics that want to come into this field is lie to them and tell them that everything is peachy everything is fine there are no flaws and you can come over here and be a hero i think it is great to come into something like ems with eyes wide open knowing what the potential challenges you're going to face are and then going forward from there setting those expectations early so this was not a scripted video whatsoever i basically just had an idea to do this video sat down started recording uh it might get a little bit rambly for you first and foremost i think one of the biggest like myths or something that we perpetuate in school is going to be coming out and doing life-saving care every single day no matter what now anybody that's done ems for longer than 15 minutes knows that that is not the case but in school you're not taught the minor stuff you're only taught how to handle cardiac arrests how to you know intubate people and give these you know really crazy medications and all of this stuff the reality of this job is that those patients are maybe one in ten maybe one in twenty if you're at an ift service just starting out maybe that's one in one hundred patients and you have to be okay as a health care provider providing comfort to people doing the small things you know being a general health care provider you're not always doing these emergency procedures it's not always cool it's not always glamorous and you just have to be okay with that so if you want to come in and you're buying into the commercials you're buying into my intro on these videos where it looks like you know man you're kicking doors you're doing all this cool stuff you're going to get on swat right away you're going to be on a helicopter that's not the case and let me tell you even on a helicopter i still don't do cool stuff every day a lot of times you go and it's routine so just be ready for that as you're coming into this profession and start honing your minor skills hone your therapeutic communication hone your small exams you know learn about utis because that's what you are going to see most of the time and you just need to be aware of it so the next part of this video obviously has to be about the pay every salty meme page on the planet has beaten this one to death no the pay is not great in the profession as a whole now you can make a good living off it you can find a service that treats you well but that is not everywhere and it is not uncommon to find private services paying minimum wage for emts and paramedics who are doing life-saving work so be ready for that understand that you have to advocate for yourself going into these roles because these services will chew you up and spit you out now it's totally fine to use ems as a stepping stone i would love to see people go in pa nursing uh firefighting you name it however when those people move on i want them to move on because they're passionate about a different facet of healthcare or of public safety not that they just hated ems so much they had to get somewhere else so that's a little bit of a tangent but going back to the pay advocate for yourself and if you're going somewhere that it's low paying make sure you have a strategy make sure you know what you're getting out of them whether that's experience put a time limit on that hey i'm getting three years of experience then i'm out if you can't make that work if that's not something you're able to feed your family off of totally get it maybe you have to look elsewhere no this is getting better and that's one of the really exciting things about this profession is that ems is coming up on its own we're a very young profession we are basically where nursing was about 30 years ago and we're just starting to professionalize so i see this getting much better i see this as something that a lot of young professionals can change coming into these services but we have to stop accepting that minimum wage is acceptable for emts and paramedics next on my list is going to be the respect so like i just said ems is a brand new profession and you are looked down on by a lot of different people especially if you're at a private ems service you'll be looked down on firefighters the nurses look down on you doctors look down on you and that is something you have to be aware of so you have to prove them wrong and you can change somebody's mind about ems by being professional by being a good health care provider and studying beyond your basic schooling nobody is a good paramedic right out of school nobody is a good emt right out of school and if you think you are i guarantee you that you are wrong and you are going to realize that about three to four years down the road if you're still here i did i realized that i was arrogant i realized that i didn't know anything about medicine and i hope that i fixed myself to a point but be aware that schooling doesn't set you up there you don't want to roll in being arrogant you want to take that ego get it off your shoulders because that is not going to help anything and you're going to burn out so fast if your worth comes from how people look at you now paramedics are doing crazy cool things we're doing surgical airways we're pushing the same meds that are being pushed in the or by the anesthesiologist to drop endotracheal tubes some places are doing chest tube other surgical procedures giving a huge pharmacology so that is super cool and that's why i don't think we should be looked down on by these other professions but you have to be aware that the perception is still there because we have all seen the people roll in they're sloppy they're out of uniform they do bad medical care and that paints the rest of us with that negative brush so the next thing obviously we have to touch on is going to be your hours so 24 hour shifts 48 hour shifts are fine if you're running you know three to four calls per day however if you get much beyond that these are going to be very sleepless nights you're going to be doing a lot of charting and it is easy to get burned out on that addition to that compounded by the pay issue is we are encouraged to pick up a ton of overtime i've never worked at an ems agency that wasn't always trying to find people to work these special events or go on this other truck or take a long distance transfer whatever it is and you have to be able to stand up for yourself and you have to be able to set aside time to spend by yourself or with your family and do something that is not ems related ems should not be your only thing it shouldn't be your identity and i've definitely fallen into that trap earlier in my career where it was everything i defined myself by but that is it's just a job they will replace you so quickly if you get hurt even a good agency and that's nothing against them it's just business you are a number and you are replaceable you might do great things but they can always find somebody to fill your slot so make sure you take time for yourself and make sure that you have things that you can do outside of ems seniority is everything in this profession it is not merit-based so when you get your schedule when you're bidding on your schedule station truck partner whatever it is know that you're gonna have to put in some time before you get something desirable so obviously i've switched jobs a ton in the last couple years and that's great i've been moving up in my profession i'm very proud of that but every time i get a new job i'm low man on the totem pole you know i came into the colorado service i'm at now i'm on flights but when i was on grounds i came into that and i was working every weekend it was a horrible schedule i hated it and then i got moved to a transfer truck for a couple months and then i got moved back into the city so even though i had been doing this almost eight years by the time i came here that was still a thing that happened now i moved to flights and once again i am bottom of the totem pole it is a small group we bid for the schedules and guess what i am working every weekend so be aware going into it that there's a seniority list ladder whatever you want to call it and you're going to need to climb that before you can get the really desirable shifts partners vehicle whatever one of the last things i want to talk about is the potential for bad working conditions you know fire department gets all of the luxuries they usually have the really nice stations the gyms recliners tvs all of that stuff which is excellent for them and some ems stations have that some ems services are firebase they're with the fire department you name it but that is the exception not the rule so be aware that a lot of ems agencies street corner post so you better come into that knowing that you have to maintain your wellness you have to get out of that truck you might have to find these little hiding spots to go do other things now before somebody complains too much about street corner posting and all of that i i'm not a fan i've done it however keep in mind that the police department also usually street corner posts depending on where you are so it is not completely unique to this service we can't all have the gyms like the firefighters do but the working conditions might be less than desirable and if you have a station there's a potential that there is not much funding there at the end of the day ems is like any other job there are positives there are negatives we are currently in a fight for legitimacy we are trying to become a profession now we're kind of at this crossroads where we're either going to go the public safety route and become kind of one with the police fire ems or we're going to go the health care route and be considered more along the lines of nursing that's not say we're becoming nurses but these are kind of the two places ems might go in this country and i personally hope that it goes more towards the health care provider nursing side of things because i think there is a huge range of possibilities beyond that from mid-level providers to increase scope of practice you name it so there is a lot of change obviously and what's really cool about this is that you can be a part of that that's one of the things that continues to draw me into this profession is that i want to be part of that change i want to drive the profession forward and anybody coming into that if you want to be successful long term you need to be a part of that change and you need to advocate for the profession it is completely fine if you come in and you want to use ems as a stepping stone i will never ever fault somebody for bettering themselves but like i said at the beginning of this video when you come out of ems i want you to look back on it fondly i want you to look back on it as a pa as a firefighter police officer whatever it is and remember your time in ems and talk well about it to other people and encourage people to join it there are plenty of super salty people that absolutely hate ems they hate the profession they've done it for a long time it's burned them in multiple ways and they will tell you to avoid it at all costs obviously i am not in this camp this job has given me a lot both in my personal life professionally it was a profession that i was able to grow in and continually strive for more it's given me a good living however everybody's going to have to make that decision for themselves when they look at what to do so there's the old debate do i go nursing or do i go paramedic now i want to do a full video on this topic but me personally i'm not going to tell you one or the other because it depends on you if you want to work in the hospital environment i'd say go bsn go get your nursing now the associates in nursing is getting a little bit phased out so i'd recommend just going for your bachelor's right out of the gate that is a great path it's a great profession but if that's not what you like if you want a little bit more autonomy if you want to work out of hospital i'd say go paramedic now is the time of change we can make this profession better but we can only do that with good people coming through the doors if you guys agree with me disagree with me like this style of video dislike it leave them in the comments down below and i will see you next week you

Channel: PrepMedic

Views: 64,796

Rating: 4.9479842 out of 5

Keywords: EMS, Emergency Medical Services, ambulance, emt, paramedic, Emergency medical technician, Bus, lights and sirens, nursing, nurse, ambulance driver, hospital, health care, medic, aemt, emt-i., why you shouldn't go into EMS, Why you don't want to be an EMT

Id: Em-WPu2eedc

Length: 12min 34sec (754 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 05 2021

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PrepMedic on YouTube spells out reasonable expectations out of a career in EMS.

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