Ambulance and ER tech, or Ambulance and paramedic school?

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Eklipse113

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Get an ED Tech job. I worked on rigs part-time for five years before transitioning to an ED about a year ago. Personally, I found working in a hospital to be a big eye opener in many ways...like how patients interface with the rest of the hospital, how docs and nurses interact (and how their general roles play out), how it feels to have somewhat longer interactions with pt's (still not always much, but hours in the ED vs minutes on the truck), etc.

Since you're interested in med school, it's also a good chance to hang around the docs...where I work, most are very nice are happy to explain procedures and/or let you watch.

I'm starting med school this summer and am really glad I worked IN the hospital before I started...it's given me added perspective on all the minutia that can shape the way medicine is practiced that I never would have thought about...like the impact of good or bad interactions between docs and nurses, bed shortages, what happens when a CT scanner goes down, etc.

So go get a Tech gig, you won't be sorry.
 
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Do want to be a doctor? Then don't be a paramedic. I can't see how it would help your application, and it takes away a seat for someone who wants to do that for a career. It's not the same as taking up a spot training to become an EMT-B, since they're much quicker to train and typically have very high turnover.

There's something wrong somewhere in your application that a slightly enhanced patient contact role won't solve. You say you have no shadowing, which strikes me as a major black mark. The clinical experience you did gain was mostly post-rejection. Are you confident in your letters of recommendation? I doubt it's your GPA or MCAT that's holding you back, unless you only applied to the best of the best schools.

If I was in your shoes, I would've looked into shadowing earlier, and made sure to apply as soon as AMCAS allows it. How many schools did you apply to, and what kind of schools were they?

As a side note, I work both as an EMT-B on a private ambulance service, as well as an ED Tech. In the ED, I get paid better than paramedics in the field do with equal amounts of experience. I get to do more things, and I've been able to learn a lot from the doctors and nurses. It's also good for a letter of recommendation, since the doctor you work with will know you better than the doctor you've shadowed 15 hours. It also gives you a more honest look at what you're getting yourself into for a prospective career.
 
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