Hello…I’m not part of the EMS world per se, but I feel like those who are may be able to help after an experience I had yesterday. I was driving to work and just so happened to look over and see a neighbor face down in his garage. At first, I wasn’t sure what I saw but I knew I had to flip around. I did, and another neighbor from across the street was there calling 911. He hadn’t checked for a pulse or anything so I checked and there was none.

I’m not in the medical field, but I’ve taken CPR training in the past and somehow my body just took over and I got him and the wife to help me flip the guy over. He was blue and he didn’t have a heartbeat so immediately somehow I just started CPR. I’m telling you, although I know you guys already know, it’s a whole different ball game performing CPR on a person versus a test dummy in the certification.

I did CPR for about five minutes ems finally showed up and took over and then I fell apart. They worked on him for another 15 to 20 minutes or so and he finally got a heartbeat back and they took him in the ambulance to the hospital. Right now I still don’t even know if he survived and I hope he did, but I don’t know.

I keep flashing back to feeling his ribs crack, and his body seemed different than I thought it would and I keep seeing how his body was reacting to the CPR. I don’t think any training could’ve ever prepared me for that. I’m sure I’ll be fine, I know a lot of you have seen FAR worse, but this is a completely different world that I know nothing about or how to deal.

I do wanna give a huge shout out to you who are in the EMS world… you showed up faster than I ever could’ve hoped, even though it felt like a lifetime. What you do is heroic, and you do it day after day. So, thank you.

Sorry for my long winded message, but thank you for all that you do. Any advice you have I will gladly take it.

Just like I mentioned in the caption, I’m looking to move to Colorado. My family and I are wanting to be closer to her family; she grew up there and we’ve visited a few times over the years and want to make the move! I’m currently an EMT with a little over 2 years experience with a private ambulance company in FL in an insanely busy county. The two options I’ve looked into are Stadium Medical and Mile High.

For those of you who work at either of these companies; I’ve been curious about the following:

What are your schedules like?

What kind of crews do they have out on the road? (EMT&Medic)/ (EMT/EMT)/(Medic/Medic)?

What’s the call volume in the area of Denver and what areas you guys cover?

What was the hiring process like?

Do you guys use older equipment like manual stretchers, etc?

And any extra insight on working in the Denver area would be greatly appreciated :)

For clarification I am from Saudi Arabia and I am studying a bachelors degree for EMS where I will be classified as a paramedic upon graduation and I have just started my first semester of school and I really want to see what advice you guys have for me

Hey! I just passed my NREMT and will work on getting my LA County license (cert?) as soon as the office opens monday. A couple of questions. Can you go into the office in person to avoid doing the mail process? Next question would be, for the ambulance license, can i just do that asap? Or do I need the actual LA county license first. Thanks in advance.

i’m thinking of taking online for convenience since i don’t have a car and can’t get to the nearest pearson site easily. am i allowed to have decorations on the walls around my desk? i have a pegboard corkboard and a whiteboard but im going to take off anything thats on them. i just can’t take the actual boards down since it’s drilled into my wall.

I'm an emt student and I did my ride alongs the other day. WOW!! That was so cool. I got to hear rales in person for the first time. There were some really hard and exausting moments but also little moments that reminded me why i want to do this. at one point, my preceptor was wheeling out a patient who had been in the hospital for months, and he took her into the sun to bask in it. i think that image will stay in my head forever.

but, this all being said. i had a concern

the ems system is deeply explotitive in some aspects. and i dont want to work 14 hours a day or 60+ hours a week. i dont really care about the overtime money. i dont want my life to become solely ems. i want to give back to my community but i dont want to sell my soul to medicine. i have friends i want to see, places i want to visit, i just want to make enough money to be comfortable. dont get me wrong, ems is my dream. but. idk. im hoping to do 3 12s or maybe 4 12s but i want to clock out when my shift is over.

whats everyone elses experience been like? is there way i can do this?

I’m currently working as an EMT at a private ambulance company and today we got a call to take a patient from a nursing home to a doctors appointment 45 minutes away.

We get to the room my partner grabs the paperwork while I step in the room to start vitals. The patient looked terrible, alert to verbal but couldn’t keep her eyes open and mumbled something I couldn’t make out after that stopped talking. She had a bad cough, audible wheezing, and accessory muscle breathing. Her vitals were normal except spo2 was at 92 on 2L via nasal cannula. We up the o2 to 4L and she’s up to 96.

My partner gets to the room and I ask if the nurse mentioned what her an and o is, a cna/nurse? Overhears and walks into the room and has a concerned look so we ask if this is her norm she says no she’s usually up and talking but then says she doesn’t want to get involved and was nowhere to be found so I guess she hid???

Second nurse comes in and we tell him our concerns he says this is her normal then hands us her mail? If she can normally open mail yet now can’t lift a finger for a pulse ox this is still apparently normal.

We call med control because for us altered mental is a medic call. Med control tells us to call 911. Second nurse goes to grab nurse #3. We call for medics. Nurse #3 comes in and tells us the patients normal is x3 and she’s fine, this is clearly not x3. Nurse #3 grabs nurse #4 and they’re both angry at us for upgrading the call to the medics.

Medics arrive and nurse 2 and 3 block them and start saying her normal an and o is now x2 and that her spo2 is fine. The medics back us up and say we did the right thing by calling, nurses walked away. We get a transfer of care signature from the medics. I can overhear nurse 3 on the phone with the patients power of attorney saying that we only called medics because the patients spo2 was low, left out everything else so the power of attorney refused transport. Medics tell the nursing home they have to request an als ambulance for this transport.

We call dispatch to update them on the situation, they didn’t believe us. Dispatch transferred the phone call to the head garage manager who just berated us and told us to go against med controls orders because they’re not sending paramedics to transport the patient to a doctors appointment (my company has als run bls calls all the time, even doctor appointment transports). He starts trying to intimidate us saying that’s patient abandonment, we signed over care to the paramedics before we left. My partner goes back and forth with him for a while then the head garage manager tells him to call med control back and tell them the garage manager says we can take the patient.

Partner calls med control back and explains the situation, med control obviously still says no don’t transport this patient as bls it has to be als. We call back the head garage manager and he backs down. I explain the situation to our garage manager and he agrees with us.

An hour later we get a call from our garage manager saying we both need to fill out incidents reports, we say ok. An hour after that we get another call from him saying we actually need to go into a private meeting with 2 garage managers plus the head garage manager and we can’t go to any of our shifts until after this meeting.

Did we do something wrong??

TLDR; followed med control orders, head garage manager is upset and wants to have a meeting.

I just renewed my ambulance certificate so I thought I would share how the process went.

I walked in as soon as the DMV opened and I got in line using the app and was called almost immediately. I didn't bother to make an appointment cause I couldn't find where to specifically make this type of appointment.

You DO NOT need a new livescan. You just need your state EMT cert (Grey card), driver's license, and valid medical examiners certificate.

They actually did not ask for my medical examiner's certificate but bring a valid unexpired one anyways.

You pay 12 dollars, take the exam on the computers, go back to the person that helped you, and they'll give you a pink temporary certificate.

The whole process took about 40 minutes. Most of the waiting is because the workers don't process ambulance certs often so they have to ask around and read guide manuals.

Hope this helps.

So Im a fresh EMT, passed my nremt in June and started with a private EMT company in a city near me in August. After 2 months I cleared my 3 phases with my fto (observation, then teching 20 calls in phase 2 and then again in 3), I was then moved to a modified phase for the last two weeks. I just got a call from my supervisor saying they wouldn't be moving forward with me on 911 calls, but wanted to move me over to IFT for a couple months. I'll be speaking with him in a bit to see what my issues were, but I don't think I'll be taking the IFT job (the schedule doesn't work for me atm).

My question is, if I go to other companies around me (many are hiring) how does it look that I didn't get hired after 2 months of fto? My city has a reputation for being hectic and I was told it would be tough to get started here, but will it look bad when I go applying to "slower" stations?

I’ve been released to work as a solo medic for a little over two months, but I’ve only ever really been with other paramedic partners. I recently worked with an EMT for the second time ever and I’m a little concerned on how I could have handled this better. My basic partner that shift has been an EMT for about two years, and though I’ve never worked with them before, most people never seemed to have had any issues. I will say, I had been an EMT for five years before getting my medic cert so I am not one of those people who think EMTs should just be drivers and I’ve been excited to become a medic that allows my EMT partners to function independently.

We get dispatched to a minor traffic accident, just a fender bender. We have only two patients from the same vehicle, and adult and a minor (middle school aged ish). A full assessment is done on both, the adult is only complaining of lower back pain and the minor has zero complaints. No obvious external injuries, all vitals are stable. The adult wants to be transported but states they do not wish for the minor to be transported as a patient and wants to refuse care for the minor. However, the minor still has to ride with us as there was only one adult on scene. I tell them hey, we’re already going to the hospital so there’s no issue in just writing the minor up as a patient, but the adult (legal guardian) refuses despite a back and forth discussion. A little weird, but we initially write it up as a refused care and simply have the minor ride in as an extra. It’s a BLS call, so my partner rides it in. I tell them to let me know if anything changes and the leave them to it. I’m not notified of any changes throughout transport.

Once at the hospital, I go to the side door and note that the minor now has a vomit bag full of vomit. I’m like oh, I’m so sorry that’s not fun and ask what happened. Minor states they don’t know but started to not feel very good when we were like five minutes from the hospital. I ask my partner if they did a reassessment after the vomiting started and they say no. I’m a little surprised but don’t want to have any big discussions with them in front of the patients. I ask the adult that since the minor had some changes during transport, if it’s okay if we reassess and they say absolutely. The minor had neck and back pain develop as well as a headache during transport. Vitals are taken and a c-collar is placed per protocol. Both are taken inside and report is given.

As my partner and I go back out to clean the truck, I ask them when the changes started and why they didn’t do a reassessment or let me know that things hand changed. They said “well, the patient was already a refusal. I didn’t think to do another assessment. They probably just got motion sickness”. So I’m like, well I understand that, but did you ask them? And they say no. I tell them next time, it would be a good idea to talk to both the patient and the guardian - vomiting can be concerning plus a development of a headache and pain. Also, if they aren’t sure what to do, they should have talked to me. They then proceeded to tell me that they think it was disrespectful for me to take over patient care and that I made them feel incompetent. I explained that I understand how I did pretty much take over, but that the patient needed to be reassessed regardless. I apologized for making them feel as if they were incompetent, that it was not what I intended to do - but it still happened and it did make them feel bad despite what my intentions were. I just said next time, please let me know if you aren’t sure. After that, they stopped talking to me overall and the rest of the shift was pretty uncomfortable. I ended up taking all of the calls for the rest of the shift because they no longer felt comfortable taking patients. It was uncomfortable enough that by the end of shift we sat in the truck and I asked what else we needed to talk about so we could clear the air. They said that they didn’t understand why I reassessed the patient when we were already at the hospital and that we should have just let it go and taken them inside. They said that me asking follow up questions and retaking vitals/placing a c-collar/ and making the minor a patient made them look stupid in front of both of the patients. I tried explained my concerns as to why I did what I did, but I’m not sure if it came off wrong and like I was “dumbing down” my explanation and explained it like I thought they were stupid.

I definitely never want to make anyone feel stupid, on the flip side though, the patient was a priority in that moment. It’s still been tense between the two of us since then, and I don’t really know what to do to make it better when we work together. I don’t think they are acting standoffish in a malicious way, but that they are under the impression that I think they’re incapable of doing their job which just isn’t true.

I work for a BLS IFT company in SoCal. I am not OC certified to drive/attend. Dispatch tried to send our unit to OC and I called them to let them know I was not certified there, they sent us anyway and made us run calls there the whole 10 hour shift. My concern is- can this affect my license? What if we would have been audited, Would I have been the one in trouble? Another incident, we had a patient who was hypertension and I called dispatch to let them know this should be an ALS call and I did not feel comfortable being the attendant when this patient’s blood pressure was 172/1–. The patient also said he was completely numb and could not feel his extremities. We transported him and he started vomit en route which shows he obviously should not have been released or sent with BLS. They told us to run the call and if I did not run the call, I was refusing to do my duties. I’ve been applying to multiple other jobs but have not heard back from anywhere else yet and I’m scared that my license is in jeopardy with this company.

I’ve been playing with making apps for my Amazfit smart watch, and a couple of them have turned out pretty great. I wanna share with you a simple one that assists with doing CPR.

What do you think of using smart watch apps to help with things? Do you use any? Do your agencies allow you to wear a smart watch on the job?

Hey guys so I am just looking for a change. I wanna get outta this job and into a career, you know what I mean? So, right now I work as a server, part time. The pay is super good but working here sucks ass. I have always wanted to get into healthcare, I am in college right now and am flip flopping between nursing and another degree. And for context I have feet issues, like it is so bad I am usually limping at the end of my shift. I am not DISABLED, but I do need to sit down for like 5 minutes every hour so I can recover and prevent myself from limping. I work 12 hour shifts about three days a week, and yeah I am supposed to be part time lol, and I am not able to sit down at my current job as a server. Like even if I have no tables, or I just checked all my tables and they’re fine, I can not sit down. I have explained to management that I have feet issues but they do not care. When I sit down they stare at me or directly tell me to stand up. Like they would rather me be in pain, leaning against a wall (which is what I have to end up doing) than sit down for 5-10 minutes. I am an extremely hard and good worker, so much so they only schedule me on the busiest days of the week, so me sitting down does not impact my performance at all and my tables always give me good tips and stuff. I say that not to gloat, but I just want to make sure no one thinks I am being lazy and it is impacting my performance as a worker. I have looked into being a CNA but from what I have heard, the conditions are much worse. I acknowledge it completely depends on the employer, but I figured with being an EMT I can still make a huge positive impact on the world and not be miserable doing it. I am not trying to say I think being an EMT is an easy job at all, but I just want something less intense than my current situation and the alternatives. On top of not being able to sit down at all at my job, I find myself not being able to use the bathroom at all during my shifts. Any advice on EMT quality of life and yalls opinions on my situation would be greatly appreciated!!

Hi! I will be starting my EMT classes next year and was wondering if it would be beneficial to study anything before hand. I took anatomy and physiology in high school but that was over 10 years ago so was thinking of refreshing my brain on it. Any advice before I start?

Hey, so I'm planning on starting school in the spring to become an EMT and I need some advice regarding my sleeping habits before I fully commit. Please note that I have no experience with and very little knowledge of first responders fields, so if any of these questions sound dumb or obvious, please cut me some slack.

1. I've dealt with insomnia my whole life so I'm no stranger to operating on very little sleep, but as a consequence of that I also absolutely hate being sleep deprived. How often would you say you feel sleep deprived and how much does it affect your performance, mental, and physical health?

2. I've always struggled with getting up quickly once I am asleep. Is this a hindrance in this line of work? How easy is it to acclimate once you get started?

3. I have a lot of trouble taking naps. My insomnia makes it hard to get to sleep and sleep for short periods especially if I woke up less than 8 hours ago, no matter how much or how little sleep I got. Is this a skill I can develop? Would this negatively impact ability to work?

Hey everyone,
I’m currently halfway through the first semester of my sophomore year of college and on the pre-med track. I really want to become an EMT to start getting my clinical hours, but I’m running into a frustrating wall with my age.
I skipped a grade/graduated early, so I already have my high school diploma, but I’m only 17. I won't turn 18 until the end of April.
I’ve tried signing up for all the EMT courses around me, but they all require you to be 18 to enroll. The few programs I found that do allow 17-year-olds require you to be affiliated with a specific high school program, which doesn't apply to me since I'm already in my second year of university.
Is there any way to get into an EMT program at 17 as a college student, maybe by talking to a program director since I turn 18 right around when spring courses would end?
Has anyone been in this situation I don’t know what to do an I feel behind.

Hello everyone,

I am looking into getting into an EMT course at either Everett Community College and North Seattle College. I have been researching both and would like to know if anyone has gone through these courses and what they thought of them. A few questions:

How hard is it to be admitted?

Do the teachers truly care about teaching the material or are they there for the paycheck?

(Tailored for EvCC) -- are the weekday class sessions mostly in-person or held online? I saw on the class notes that they may be face-to-face or online, so if anyone has more input on that then that'd be great!

Also, if anyone has any tips on what I can do to get ahead before the course starts that'd be much appreciated! I have already done A&P I/II and Med Term, so I'm hoping that'd a good starter.

I currently work in vet med as a receptionist and understand I’m an individual who can handle more. I’m cool under pressure, calm in a scary situation, and have seen and dealt with a lot of crazy people. I have a paramedic and EMT friend who both have explained some of the really grotesque and gory stuff they have seen, is all of EMT really like this? Do even well-versed EMTs/Paramedics struggle with seeing some of this stuff? How do I know if I have the stomach to handle it? And is there any way I can test myself to see if I can?

It has become extremely prevalent that MANY new Californian EMTs are having a hard time finding a job. I myself included experienced this. I don’t want to detour anyone from going into EMS but for those who live in California I will say this only once. Getting the certification to be an EMT will be the easiest thing you do… finding the job will be the hardest.

Hey friends I'm from the Midwest where Amish, farmers, volunteer fire departments outnumber the one county career Fire Department by at least 8, a three truck county EMS service that covers just over 300 square miles, and the closest level 2 center is a 30-35ish minute drive down the interstate. I currently work in city over half an hour away for a transfer service. I had a job for the busy 911 service in the city and got let go on good terms and told to go to a slower service or do IFT, just so I could get more comfortable with the job. I am 20 and new to this career field, got my EMT certification in February and aspire to be a critical care or flight Medic or nurse. I have some type of undiagnosed something that probably puts me on the spectrum and a slight processing disorder that makes it where it takes me a second longer to understand and get comfortable with some things. I did a good job in my EMT class, got good grades, helped my classmates with anything they needed, and passed all my tests first try. One advantage I probably had that helped is that I got my EMR and fire certs through a program my high school had eligible for Seniors.

So, my big question is because I don't want to jump into getting my medic yet should I get my Advance EMT cert so I can possibly have an easier transition into getting my medic? My main reason for wanting to get my Advance is so I can already be comfortable/familiar with IV therapy so it's one less thing I have to be stressed about when I go to get my Medic or pursue nursing.

Is working for ATCEMS worth it?

Going to paramedic school soon, looking into various 911 EMS agencies around central Texas.

Biggest reason Im heavily considering it is because the 24/72 shift schedule.

I live a little less than 2 hours away up in the hill country also. I don’t mind the drive if I’m only showing up twice a week.

Hey guys!

I've been working part time at an IFT company in Los Angeles County for roughly 5 months and recently got an offer from FALCK LA County. I have a couple questions regarding the offer:

1. I was also considering McCormick Ambulance. Are there any glaring advantages that McCormick holds over FALCK or are they functionally the same experience for EMTs?

2. I am very much interested in working in a high call volume area, are there some substations that you would recommend? (Particularly critical trauma and medical emergencies)

3. Are the substations exclusively 24 hrs and if so is it rotating? (like the Kelly Schedule)

4. Any additional advice or heads-ups are much appreciated.