EMT School and lifestyle.

Question

I am considering going to EMT school. I don't know any EMT's and I want to know what the job is like, and of course what school is like. What are the hours like? Do you rotate shifts? How do you get to be an EMT on an AirEvac Chopper? And since this is anonymous here, how much money can I expect to make rite out of school (In Springfied Missouri)? And anything else you would like to share. Best information gets the 10 points. Thanks. (if it matters I am 32 and single, and have never been to college before).

Answer 1

The money blows.  You make maybe $8-10 an hour.  It's a thankless job.  You work 12 hour shifts or 24s, and ambulance companies like AMR don't pay you much and some often TRY to s***w you over for your overtime by doing stuff like resetting the overtime at midnight, so if you work 4 hours from 8pm - 12am, and then 12am-8am, you don't get overtime, because it was on two different days.

The job itself is a lot of heavy-lifting.  People are getting fatter and fatter and you spend a lot of time schlepping people experiencing shortness-of-breath to urgent care.  The number one reason people get out of the business is because they injure their back while lifting.  Permanently.  

There's also a lot of moving very old people, many of whom are out of sorts.  And nobody's ever in a good mood, because, you know, they just had to call an ambulance for thousands of dollars and they're probably in pain or distress.  The shifts can rotate, but it depends on your company, some of the shifts you work are pretty stable.

School is a piece of cake.  It's an easy EASY few weeks.  You don't need a degree, all you need is certification that you took a walk-through class for a few weeks.  There's not that much you have to know.  It's pretty much your ABCs (Airway-Breathing-Circulation) and the 7 "drugs" you're allowed to help people with which anybody can actually take on their own like O2.  As an EMT, you don't actually diagnose or fix the person.  It's your job to get them to someone who CAN fix them.

It's a thankless job.

But you're not there to be thanked.  You're there to help.  You go and get people in trouble, get them to where they need to be, and most of the time, you don't ever find out if they lived or died.  There's also an adrenaline rush for 911 calls especially that a lot of EMTs get accustomed/addicted to, things are either really slow or GO GO.  What you get out of being an EMT is the knowledge and satisfaction that you're doing something good.

To get to an AirEvac Chopper, you usually have to be a paramedic or nurse.  Those jobs are few and far between and you have to be the best of the best.  The one guy I knew who did that had already done it in the armed forces.

EMT is really a stepping stone job.  You work as an EMT to get somewhere else.  If you want to be a medic, you start as an EMT.  Medics make around $30000-$40000 a year, $15 an hour.  It's not a lot either.  Or you can work as an EMT to eventually get a job as an ER Tech which is actually a decent gig.  Or a lot of EMTs eventually get a gig as a firefighter (also a good gig, and 90% of fire-calls are medical-related).  But people who're EMTs for a decade or more, frankly, they should've moved on by then.  And by then their back is probably almost broken anyway.  

It's not a career.  It's just a starting point.  Don't think of it as an career.  Pick something else you want to be and use being an EMT to get there if you have to.