Low salaries for EMTs?

[pseudoknot]

By "practicing medicine" I mean the provision of medical care to treat diseases. This is not strictly limited to physicians. There are people who actually want to be paramedics and would like to do more than treat patients based off of cook books. Similarly, the skills and attributes required to be a good fire fighter and a good paramedic are vastly different.

Look, this is pretty off topic. The OP said "why aren't EMTs getting paid more" and leviathian and I said "actually, sometimes they get paid a lot." Then MedicFL said we were ******ed and the numbers couldn't be that high, so I posted some documentation from an area I'm familiar with. It's quite a detour for you to come in and say "oh, but nobody would ever want to be a medic in LA, no matter what the salary." I think you're arguing just to argue.

Also, you do realize that many people feel that having less responsibility is a plus in a job, right?

As far as LA, hey, it's not perfect but all I'm saying is that FF/PMs can get paid a lot there, and there are a lot of people who would kill for that job even if you're not among them. It's not the pinnacle of complex, independent medical decision making, but neither is any other prehospital job. As you know, there are a lot of nonmedical challenges associated with prehospital care, so I don't think paramedics in LA are mindless robots just because they don't have the largest scope of practice.

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[Siggy]

As far as LA, hey, it's not perfect but all I'm saying is that FF/PMs can get paid a lot there, and there are a lot of people who would kill for that job even if you're not among them.

A lot of people would kill to be a fire fighter. Unfortunately, the best way to provide mediocre (at best) prehospital care is to force people who don't care about prehospital care past getting into the fire department to become paramedics. Ever wonder why it's called a fire department if most of their calls are medical in nature? Wouldn't EMS based fire suppression be more accurate than fire based EMS?

 

[pseudoknot]

A lot of people would kill to be a fire fighter. Unfortunately, the best way to provide mediocre (at best) prehospital care is to force people who don't care about prehospital care past getting into the fire department to become paramedics. Ever wonder why it's called a fire department if most of their calls are medical in nature? Wouldn't EMS based fire suppression be more accurate than fire based EMS?

I was starting to reply to this, but then realized it doesn't have anything to do with the original topic of the thread or the hijack.

Also, your point is not clear. Are you suggesting changes to the system? If so, what changes? Are you saying that what I've said above is incorrect? Please clarify.