Can EMS medical direction be a full time job?

[CircadianRhythm]

I want to pre-face this thread by saying I am undergrad student taking a break from my bachelors degree for paramedic school, so if it is inappropriate of me to post in this forum I apologize. But I want to attend medical school to be an EMS medical director. I really enjoy EMS but I do not want to work night shifts my entire career, I know this is also the case for emergency medicine. But from my search it seems many of the medical directors that post on SDN are part time employees who work full time in the ED.

Is it possible to work fulltime as as medical director for say a county EMS agency/fire department and work part time in clinical ED to maintain your medical knowledge/board certification? What is the realistic earning potential in such a scenario? I know it wont be what clinical EPs make but I havent heard any figures.

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[emergentmd]

If you are EMS director of a reasonably large city, then its a full time job. If not you can work part time in ED.

EMS directory rarely makes more than an ED Doc

 

[Birdstrike]

If you are EMS director of a reasonably large city, then its a full time job. If not you can work part time in ED.

EMS directory rarely makes more than an ED Doc

I agree. I have a friend interviewing right now for an EMS directorship in a major city that would allow him to drop his ED shifts to about 2 per month (max of 4). As you can imagine, it's a very competitive position. The rest would be full time EMS direction. But for medium to small EDs it's part time or 1/4 time depending on how much work there actually is to do.

 

[Daedalus]

Yep - one of our residency faculty is the full time medical director of a major city fire department - he makes >$250k from that position alone, in addition to working ~2 shifts per month in the ED. Other faculty who are EMS medical directors generally need to pull a full time EM schedule.

 

[CircadianRhythm]

So is this a reasonable career path or are the full time EMS gigs few and far between for the docs with a lot of experience?

 

[dotcb]

Yes - it can be a full time job. There are not a lot of jobs though. I'd be concerned that wanting to avoid night shifts is not a good reason to go into EM and pursue EMS. Better to do another medical specialty such as derm or path where days are guaranteed. If you have issues working overnight, you definitely should not do EM as a specialty.

I work with 3 EM docs who do near full time EMS medical direction. They got these positions in the middle of their careers, after practicing medicine full time for 10+ years.

In my department night shifts go down with seniority, regardless of total number of shifts worked per month. Junior faculty - 3/mo, mid career - 2/mo, senior - 1/mo. So a mid career EMS medical director who works in my ED might only work 2 ED shifts per month, but BOTH of them would be nights.

 

[Angry Birds]

From what I have seen, it seems that such positions are few and far between, and are therefore extremely competitive to obtain--to the point where it would not seem wise to invest all that time, energy, and money to pursue so many years of study if that is your only acceptable outcome. Hope that makes sense.

 

[CraftyMed]

Many of the "major city" positions are held for a long period of time, which also decreases the number of available positions at any given time.

 

[southerndoc]

Many of the "major city" positions are held for a long period of time, which also decreases the number of available positions at any given time.

I'm medical director for two large services for 0.25 FTE's. I can tell you that the money from EMS is much, much less than what I make clinically. Keep that in mind if you do EMS work half of full-time.

 

[EM_Rebuilder]

I sort of fell into EMS Medical Direction and have found that I *really* like it. The down side is the money.

I am actually over two moderate sized cities (one 250K, the other 200K), somewhere around 70K transports a year from 911 calls... and I had been doing that half time, plus working 6 shifts a month and reduced my pay around 20% versus working 12 shifts a month. I have refocused to work on a business start up and thus am working 2 shifts a month if that.

As has been stated, I could consider myself a full time medical director, but would make considerable less than 'being an ER doctor'. You can get a single gig in a larger city/system that will pay closer to a full time ER docs salary, but there are maybe 50 of such jobs in the US. Doable, but difficult, and very very political in nature to even get and probably will require board certification by the time you are around.

Good luck... dedicated EMS medical directors are a different breed...

 

[CajunMedic]

Thanks to OP for asking the question and to everyone else for the info. EMS Medical Direction is one of my long-term career goals. The small service I work for has had 3 of us go to med school in the past 5 years. Running joke is whichever one of us finishes and comes back to the area first gets to be the next medical director.

 

[CircadianRhythm]

Thanks for the responses everyone, very informative. This has given me a lot to consider.