Career Change: Complete

[SkiBrain]

Just saw this thread C. Was going to say CONGRATS, but after your last post, GOOD LUCK!!! seems more appropriate. Looks like you're experiencing the initiation, breaking in period that comes with any new job, so hang in there and hope things bet better.

[The Dad]

Trying to find one of those inspirational posters, to say something like "no one ever did great things by taking the easy way out."

But I got nothing.

Good luck.

[BrassMonkey]

Groin fungus... now you've got my attention.

Me too. Just disinfected my hard drive with gasoline.

[AKPogue]

Welcome to the world of EMS!!!!

[emtnate]

Yes, welcome to the world of EMS.

I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've been thanked by a patient or their family. Just wait until they get the bill, then they'll call your company and start bitching about the care they received hoping to get out of paying. I've heard some good ones while doing the billing paperwork at our station.

Try to keep your head up. You'll get more used to the smells the more you ride. Look around the truck for a tub of vicks in the rig. A little under your nose goes a long way during some transfers. Also, the exhaust fans in the back never seem to work right. If you think the truck is hot now, just wait until winter when it won't warm up. Remember, you won't be stuck riding the back forever.

More unsolicited advice: when a diabetic tells you they have sores on their feet and it's not related to the care they need at the moment, don't take off their socks and look. A little whiff of gangrene related smells will stay with you for days.

[grrrr]

Yes, there is definately a plethora of patients who are less than pleasant, usually in all ways at once. It is the ones who are mentally incapable of taking care of themselves who end up in the worst shape...they keeping popping back up like an evil fungus themselves. They're the ones who take the system for granted and don't express any gratitude for the service. They're also usually the ones who are getting a free ride.

But there are the other ones. The ones who are thankful, and who come by afterwards and bring cookies. Or sometimes like Big Mary who sent us a note saying she baked us cookies...but then she ate them all before she could find someone to bring them in. That's okay, she was wasting away to 280 pounds and needed them more than we did.

Unfortunately, despite the worse pay, and usually worse conditions, ambulance company employees don't get the respect that firefighter/EMTs do.

Oddly enough, the most common thanks come from the families of those who didn't make it. Thanks for keeping dad alive so we could say goodbye. Here's a little something for the firemen. So you live for that, and for knowing that not only are you doing something really valuable, you are doing something most people wouldn't last their first shift through.

It gets better. You get good shifts. Sometimes you even get to sleep the night through. Or if you're in a really quiet house like mine, you get to wishing you had a little groin fungus call....or not.

[emtnate]

Oddly enough, the most common thanks come from the families of those who didn't make it. Thanks for keeping dad alive so we could say goodbye. Here's a little something for the firemen. So you live for that, and for knowing that not only are you doing something really valuable, you are doing something most people wouldn't last their first shift through.

How true is that...

The last woman that expressed her gratitude towards myself was after we stopped working on her husband. Nothing went right during the code, and the whole time we had an agonal rhythm and the occasional gasp for air. b Nothing worked for him, it was his time. We bought him enough time in the ER for the priest to come and say a prayer. Family got to whisper their goodbyes.

As we were cleaning up, she gave us all a hug and thanked us profusely for giving them time to say goodbye.

[AKPogue]

So how is it going? You still liking it or are you in shock?

[Pinner]

This thread makes me want to switch careers.

[BeanDip4All]

pinner- why the bump? what made you find this thread again?

anyways- if any of you mags are interested in changing careers into EMS or other avenues of healthcare i'm happy to answer all questions and/or help out with resumes, networking, etc. that's really rewarding for me, cuz i went through it, and know how intimidating/overwhelming it can be. i also give "how to get a job in ems" lectures and career coaching to our students & recent grads at the SF Paramedic Association we get students of all shapes, sizes, backgrounds, ages... ems like all fields has its drawbacks, frustrations and bureaucratic shit piles, but i still find it to be heaps better than working in high finance. at the end of the day you're still fundamentally helpin people not working alongside ibankers and fucking over the global economeez...

also- just as a last minute edit- anyone else considering the career change- the job market for EMS and healthcare in general right now is far from spectacular [RELATED- anyone recruiting you into a for-profit nursing school or telling you about a "nursing shortage" is either on jupiter or on crack] - days of hiring bonuses and/or free/comped medic school if you move to County X are long gone (at least here on the west coast), but if you're a hustler/networker/not a total ape that people wouldn't mind being stuck in a rig for 24 hrs with, there are jobs to be found. generally new emt-b grads will have to cut their teef working bls/ift for 6mo to a year (or more, depending on where you are, I've heard socal is REALLY flooded these days... inland empire/central valley not so much) before landing an als position. paramedic similar but not *as* bad as there's more barrier to entry.

i could go on and on... post or pm specific ?s if you got em.

ps- okay now you opened the floodgates- i can't resist leaving one last tip, just because i see so many people falling prey to this same mistake over and over, oftentimes at the frustration of having to repeat entire programs, be it didactic or internship portions, always at a big financial loss- give a wide berth to any and ALL for-profit healthcare schools, PARTICULARLY ones with "bootcamps" condensed programs etc... on the whole they're bloodsucking predatory scammers and churn out generally unprepared grads who can't pass their national boards and in particular can't get jobs. those types of institutions exist solely to sign as many students as they can up for federal loans and get $$ from government programs, tend not to give two shits about their students becoming knowledgeable, quality healthcare providers.

it's tough, because these days times are tough- lots of people out there are desperate, and desperate people are vulnerable. maybe they don't check the school out as well as they should, maybe they forget to see their matriculation rates, or believe the "oh yeah, we have great job counseling after graduation" lies... i *HATE* seeing students come to us after going through one of these schools, and it happens again and fucking again... drives me up a wall.

when it comes to entry level healthcare/career changing healthcare type jobs, community colleges, JCs, non-profit and state schools are the way to go.

FOR EXAMPLE, here is a complete BS fucking SCAM crappy EMT program that charges TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS and promises job placement: utter bs, and ridiculously charging 10k for what oftentimes is a 25k paying job:
http://www.universalcareers.org/programs.php
^^ they also totally lie about how long it takes to become a paramedic. fucktards. god these places piss me off so much because they prey on well-intentioned yet desperate people hoping to go to school, turn their lives around or whatever and work honest jobs

[Tunco]

At least in my Volly FD, the town will pay for EMS classes up to Paramedic.

[Diamond Joe]

Best of luck and I look forward to watching you inevitably turn into a cynic as you witness every aspect of human nature. You'll know what I mean in about 6 months.

Just remember the mantra, 'it's an emergency to them, it's an emergency to them....', when you are with the guy who has had toe pain for two days and it suddenly became an emergency at 2am

you expect to help in true emergencies but the burnout comes from the endless bullshit.

So, coming from a jaded cynic who's been in the field for a decade, how's it going from this angle?!? I'm just lucky that I'm off the bus and on a pump, but I still have to deal with that guy whos toe has hurt for 2 days, at 3 am... I just dont have to transport him.

we start full time FF/EMT at about $27..

Where is it you start FF/EMT at $27 / hr... I think I need to move.

Srsly, where is this??!? Most of the departments around here MAX out at less than this... (Our top step, which takes 7 years to get to, is just under $25/hr...)

[zion zig zag]

So, coming from a jaded cynic who's been in the field for a decade, how's it going from this angle?!? I'm just lucky that I'm off the bus and on a pump, but I still have to deal with that guy whos toe has hurt for 2 days, at 3 am... I just dont have to transport him.

I've been at it a little over seven years now and I'm off the bus and on the ladder truck. It's an als truck so I still have to ride on an ambulance if it's a real als call but I do get to avoid the majority of the bullshit. I hear the stuff that the bls rig is rolling on and it makes me cringe.

[QuikR12]

Good thread bump Pinner. I'm amidst a pretty similar career change as yours, Beandip; enviro finance broker for the big institutional clients (ie. Oil/energy companies, big banks, etc), to aspiring med doc, and despite working the past 19 days straight w/o a day off, including some +30 hour shifts digging fireline and burning stumpholes, I couldn't be happier to be out and off the desk. The FF gig is intended to provide means to complete my necessary post-Bacc, but I'm also looking to pick-up my EMT-B this spring as well as the Wilderness first responder. It looks like by the plan I've laid out, it'll take a minimum of 2 years to complete the rest of the Pre-reqs, plus another year for the application cycle. Three years isn't a lot of time, especially considering the hellaciously busy schedule I'll be under, but hopefully enough time to gather some good experience.

So Beandip; should you have any advice to provide for me and my plans, please do share. Otherwise, great thread, timely bump, and I'm happy to hear your career switch is making you happy.

[carvedog]

Been watching a "Trauma" marathon on Netflix and thinking about you beandip. I know it's hollyweird style but I find it entertaining.

Glad to hear you are still at it.

[BeanDip4All]

So Beandip; should you have any advice to provide for me and my plans, please do share. Otherwise, great thread, timely bump, and I'm happy to hear your career switch is making you happy.

Hey quickr- congrats on your career change so far and hope you got in shape fast enough for the fire gig- sounds like you did!

as far as advice- I have some. you may not like hearing it, and you've possibly heard it before and already rejected it (lots do- and to an extent, i did as well)- if you're aiming for med-doc, i'd say don't waste your time pursuing or working as an EMT-b or WFR. even paramedic. just completely and utterly throw yourself into your post-bacc, networking with professors, getting a strict 4.0, volunteering to help with their research, ideally try to work under one of them and be on a team getting something published. also VOLUNTEER doing something (anything, not even necessarily in the er or something like that, even be a big brother or teach little kids soccer, stuff like that). 2nd only to 4.0 the post bacc is to study like hell for the MCAT and knock that out of the park.

along those lines (and this is so annoying!) i've heard a few med school admission committee officers not even UNDERSTANDING the difference between emt-b and paramedic (arrrrgh) so they group all EMS together as just a "weekend cert" kind fun thing people do as a side activity that in their eyes does nothing more to enhance you as a candidate than say, being a really good piano player.

if you decide you absolutely *need* patient contact hours (which is more important for getting into PA schools than md schools), hospital based is the way to go. a few of the information sessions i've sat in on for md and pa schools mentioned that their "patient contact" hours calculation only take 20% of your hours for anything ambulance based or outside of a hospital. which means even as a paramedic, which is a two year program and can be an associate's degree around here, you'd get less hours than a hospital-based CNA. I'd have to work 3000 hours to get into stanford, but even since i'm on an ambulance, i'd really have to work 15,000 hours which is gonna take about 10 years! uck. even some hospital jobs only get 60, 70, 80, and 90% of the credit in their admissions formula.

the higher percentage jobs are things like scribe (which is basically like a proctor who follows the md around and writes down his charts), ER tech (need emt-b plus phlebotomyI), surg tech, respiratory therapist...

Here is some further reading which you may find helpful:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/arch.../t-556556.html

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=556556

my co-workers' ranks are FILLED with great, smart, and very hard working people who want or wanted to go to med school, got caught up in emt-b-->paramedic, then years tick by and they stay paramedics, dreaming about one day being a md... time goes on and they stack their overtime and work and work to pay bills, get big trucks or whatever, girlfriends, wives, mortgages and all of a sudden they are sitting to renew their ACLS class for the 3rd time and they're still not mds. so far, the ones who DO break out of the cycle and DO leave to go to med school are the ones who only VERY STRICTLY ONLY work 1 day a week MAX- or no days a week and just pick up shifts very rarely here and there, and full time focus solely on school and studying for the MCAT. we have a guy in his fourth go-around year of applications, and despite being this fantastic medic who you'd totally want to show up when you're turned over in your car in a ditch, he's stretching to get into a caribbean med school and dreaming of DO schools :-/

[BeanDip4All]

this post in particular articulates some of what i'm trying to get at:

This post is directed at the original poster, but applies to traditional undergrads as well. Anyway,
I'm assuming you're an EMT-B already, since that is usually a mandatory pre-requisite to becoming a paramedic (though this might be different in other states). Great, you got a head start on your med school hopeful peers, you don't really know too much as an EMT-B so you still have a healthy appreciation that you don't know very much about medicine. Believe it or not this is a wonderful place to be. I strongly advise you to stop right there (at EMT-B) and devote yourself entirely to becoming a physician.

Here's why:
EMS is a bit of a trap, you can get all caught up in it, because you are enjoying what you are doing, helping others, taking care of emergencies, etc. It's a good high when things go really right. Then you meet a paramedic, and think to yourself: boy can this guy take care of business, I'd really love to be able to do all that great stuff too! But there is really not that much to being a paramedic. Unfortunately nobody really tells you this. IN your world, all these new skills are exciting and impressive, So then things start to take a turn in your life. Let me tell you a little about what I mean:

Paramedics are funny people, they are experts in a very, very, narrow slice of medicine. In fact, when it comes down to the business of prehospital emergency care, nobody does it like a medic. WOW, I think I want to do this medic thing, I'm going to go for it, atleast for now, until I go to med school next year. BUT, you can easily get all caught up in the ALS pre-hospital care scene. Because you are doing life saving interventions you may feel like you fast forwarded yourself to "doctor" or at least the preconceived notion you had of doctors before you ever got involved in medicine. So anyway, there you'll be doing all these great skills, and soon you'll start to think that gee-whiz look at all the great things that I can do as a medic (ha! nurses my ass, they can't do this stuff!). Heck, all that other stuff in medicine really is not as important as this stuff I'm doing right now (IVs, intubation and pacing oh my!), and that's when you start to make a very big mistake. All of a sudden you really stop caring about all the other things that medicine has to offer, so you stop learning about anything that doesn't have anything to do with the "important stuff". Now depending on how long this lasts you can piss away 4,5,6 years doing EMS work and be totally satisfied. But then something happens, it can be some job that went bad on you or you come across something you've never been prepared to deal with, or any other number of things that cause you to become reflective about yourself as a professional. So then you start to read again and you once again rediscover that there is a whole world of medical knowledge out there you weren't aware of as a medic. So now you're studying again and learning about the things you didn't know, but you are never able to do it in any coherent way. The sheer volume of the material is intimidating and you have no real way of knowing if you are making any progress. Plus you are surrounded by your peers, fellow paramedic professionals who tell you things like who the heck cares about temporal arteritis, that's not important and what the heck is so important about this pancreatic psuedocyst you speak of??? So now you start to get frustrated, and you look around at the people around you who are very content with being medics and knowing what medics know, and incorrectly equating their skill proficiency with medical knowledge. But not you. You start to remember that you wanted to be a doctor, and you look back and say, how the **** did I get here, this isn't what I wanted for myself professionally or personally. This whole medic thing was supposed to be a stepping stone to becoming a physician. You become, really frustrated, pissed off, burnt out and then to add insult to injury you start to realize that you are wildly underpaid for the work you are doing. Nurses don't have to put up with 1/2 the crap that I do and they get paid 3 times as much, plus I know a hell of alot more! That's the last straw, F-this you say, I'm going back to school. Only now you are well into your mid- late 20's, (in your case, mid-late 30's) maybe you got a mortgage, a big monthly car payment, who knows maybe a wife and kids in private school, your Golden Opportunity to become a physician is now well past you. You now must suffer in new and interesting ways to get to where you wanted to be in the first place. So sacrifices and painful choices are made and finally 7-8 years later you are back on track for the MD, older, a little more worn out, less enthusiastic, but hopefully a little wiser. Maybe.

i'm caught up a bit that ^^ same cycle. i'm very, very happy on a rig and absolutely LOVE LOVE LOVE working ems- still learning tons and hell, i also teach it now! but realizing i've gotten a bit stagnant, and have been recently re-evaluating my goals and how i've been spending my time/efforts to achieve them.

[zion zig zag]

I've been told that the PA program here at the U of U was actually designed for street and combat medics originally and that they still favor medics over other ways to get clinical hours. Maybe true, maybe not. I'm starting to look that way more and more, I've talked to counselors and figured out what pre-reqs I need (daunting). I think the biggest hurdle would be the 2 years of PA school as it's a full time only program. Do I take on massive loans for living expenses or wait till I can retire form the FD (I'd be 49)?
I'm in no rush, I'm still happy where I am, I just want more.

[TNKen]

Congrats.... You're one step away from be a full-fledged 'troller on some God-forsaken rat hole of a hill in the North-East.

[Pinner]

Today, almost two years since I bumped a two-year-old thread, I took the NREMT cognitive exam. Unless I seriously fukt up (which I didn't) I will be a newly minted EMT tomorrow.

Leaving on Monday to lead a three-month adventure travel and service learning trip to Ghana, then back in the country in September and I'll be on the hunt for a job asap. I'd like to work in a clinical setting, but probably will run on a private company for a while to cut my teeth. Maybe ski patrol? Paramedic academy or PA school might come next. We'll see.

It wasn't quick, but the career change is most decidedly underway.

[stompinlines]

Congrats dude.
PA?
Overworked, underpaid, underappreciated.

[Meadow Skipper]

Right on. There's always patrol when you get back.

[13]

Today, almost two years since I bumped a two-year-old thread, I took the NREMT cognitive exam. Unless I seriously fukt up (which I didn't) I will be a newly minted EMT tomorrow.

Leaving on Monday to lead a three-month adventure travel and service learning trip to Ghana, then back in the country in September and I'll be on the hunt for a job asap. I'd like to work in a clinical setting, but probably will run on a private company for a while to cut my teeth. Maybe ski patrol? Paramedic academy or PA school might come next. We'll see.

It wasn't quick, but the career change is most decidedly underway.

Nice, dude.

Missed this thread the first time around but I did a 180 as well. Went from a corporate career track and now I'm an RN at U of M. Ski bummed in the interim.

[jfost]

Congrats dude.
PA?
Overworked, underpaid, underappreciated.

I dunno, we know some PA's with really really really sweet gigs in Dermo. Seems kinda like nursing, it is what you make of it...

[grrrr]

Today, almost two years since I bumped a two-year-old thread, I took the NREMT cognitive exam. Unless I seriously fukt up (which I didn't) I will be a newly minted EMT tomorrow.

Leaving on Monday to lead a three-month adventure travel and service learning trip to Ghana, then back in the country in September and I'll be on the hunt for a job asap. I'd like to work in a clinical setting, but probably will run on a private company for a while to cut my teeth. Maybe ski patrol? Paramedic academy or PA school might come next. We'll see.

It wasn't quick, but the career change is most decidedly underway.

Congratulations.