i’m currently working as an ER tech — the pay is better and i’ll take an unpaid break over running nonstop with only the time you’re writing your report as “downtime” for the day — but i really miss ems. i’ve debated going and getting my fire cert but i enjoy the medical aspect of ems more than anything.
the two ems companies i have worked with have been awful. there were a lot of bad aspects of the job i was willing to deal with, but what really got me was management at one telling a room full of emts about two of our coworkers that were running nonstop calls for 24 hours and fell asleep at the wheel. they died and all management could say about it was that it was an act of god and couldnt have been prevented — “the crew did everything right; they did everything they could to keep themselves awake, but these things just happen”
ambulances never got the maintenance they needed. one of our rigs’ brakes failed while a crew was pulling into a children’s hospital. no one was hurt but the crew had been asking for maintenance to check it out for weeks and it wasn’t taken off the road. so many preventable safety hazards happened because the companies were managed like shit
i feel like i hear comparable stories from anyone who has ever worked in private ems. are there any good private ems jobs out there?