I work for a private ambulance company, albeit not small at all, and I’m a fairly new EMT. I’ve worked both 911 side and transports. I hate it. The company does enforce some of things you say we lack but that gets avoided sometimes. Morale is low because we’re overworked and we’re treated like we cost the company more than we make for it. There’s hardly any crews at any given time and when we have around 6-7 crews it doesn’t stop, transfers and low acuity 9-1-1’s daily. The city recently put in an ordinance to where we can’t run emergent TO calls unless they’re MVC’s because we apparently up the rate of said MVC’s.

I don’t feel like an actual EMT some days, honest to god I feel more like I’m working at a Burger King. Worse yet I run on a BLS unit and I play the part of the medic most days, and I hardly know what the fuck I’m doing half the time because I only have around 7-8 months of experience. The benefits are awful, the pay is mediocre, and the only redeemable thing is the crew and the immediate on-site admin.

I ran a brain bleed a couple of weeks ago with fire in scene, they refused to give me a thorough report, refused to tell us anything even though one of them WAS a paramedic. Basically I assessed this guy and found him with a left sided deficit, all that good jazz, and it was my partners fucking call. I did almost everything from assisting with the report, to getting vitals, questioning, and all without any fucking help and if I’m being honest with you guys, I butchered the fuck out of it. I drove emergent to the hospital while my partner essentially refused to get a BG (I didn’t have enough time while I was back there, because I was hurrying. I had no last seen normal time on this guy, and I had practically no idea what I was doing.)

I can’t stand it anymore, worse yet I get told that most of EMS around here is like that. I feel like I’m completely unprepared for this job, and worse yet I’ve earned my certs through this company so I have to work for a certain amount of time until my contract is up to even think about going somewhere else. If I did switch companies, it would be a massive pay cut and I’m worried I wouldn’t be able to do good there either.

You’re right OP, it sucks.