07/24/2024
Imagine if you needed an ambulance and this is all you got. A box on wheels full of equipment and medications to save your life, but no one there to use it.
EMS is in trouble and people don't seem to notice and/or care.
Every day I sign on to my social media accounts I see new news stories being posted on the EMS pages that I follow about workers leaving the EMS profession in droves.
As I read through the comments sections on these stories I tend to see a similar theme: poor wages, poor benefits, ridiculous expectations for hours worked, and management teams that don't care about their employees.
The national average salary for an EMS provider is $33,000 according to the BLS.
$33,000!!!!
The local car wash has a billboard posted advertising $40,000 for management positions! AT THE CAR WASH!
The mayor of New York City recently made headlines as he tried to justify why EMS providers there didn't need pay comparable to those in the fire service and law enforcement. "It's a different kind of work," he said. Ya think?!
Approximately 90% of the nation's 911 EMS providers are non-fire based services. This means that they are county-run services, private services, or hospital-based services. A lot of them are not unionized and don't have the same perks as fire and law enforcement agencies. Wages tend to be the biggest problem.
Most EMS workers have to work A LOT of overtime just to make a living, or work more than one job. Do you really want someone who's been on for 48 hours or has been juggling 2-3 jobs making life-or-death decisions at 3AM? I'm lucky enough to work for a service that pays decent wages but there are services not too far from here where medics are making $13-$15/hr.
Do you know what it takes to be a paramedic??
First, you have to go to EMT school. Then you have to go to paramedic school. And depending on how you go to paramedic school that can be from 1-4 years worth of education (certification-only vs. associate's degree program vs. bachelor's degree program). They are trained in advanced life support skills including advanced airway management, cardiology, pharmacology, and even some surgical skills.
Paramedics and EMTs are out there bringing an aspect of the emergency department to the patient's doorstep. They assess patients, make treatment plans, administer medications, mix medication drips and place on infusion pumps, infuse blood, place people into medically-induced comas to take over their airways, place them on ventilators, place chest tubes, perform pericardiocentesis, perform surgical cricothyrotomies, and the list goes on. And they do it for $33,000/year! Are you kidding me?!
And so what happens?
You lose experienced medics to higher-paying professions like nursing. Which leaves the patients on the streets without that experienced healthcare provider to bring that care to their doorstep.
I've personally known several GREAT paramedics who've left the industry because they had to just to be able to make more money to support their families.
And like I said, every single day there's a new story from somewhere in the country where something like this is happening. Entire services have shut down which then adds strain to neighboring services left to pick up the slack. One comment even said "EMS is a dying profession."
