Street Medic/EMT-B on Medical School Application?

[hopefulandgay]

Hi all. I've been volunteering as an EMT-B at various protests since May absolutely love doing it. I'd like to mention it in my activities section but I'm unsure of how it would be viewed and how to best present it. Any thoughts and ideas would be greatly appreciated!

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[LizzyM]

Are you thinking about this for next year? It seems a bit late to be applying this year. EMT-B volunteer seems like a perfectly reasonable volunteer activity. Do you have a supervisor who will vouch for your hours, etc.

 

[hopefulandgay]

Are you thinking about this for next year? It seems a bit late to be applying this year. EMT-B volunteer seems like a perfectly reasonable volunteer activity. Do you have a supervisor who will vouch for your hours, etc.

Nope not applying this year, just a non-trad student keeping track of her hours and hoping to apply next year. I do have someone who can vouch for my hours. My only concern is how to word it. Not sure if I should mention the words "street medic" or "tear gas" or anything of that sort? I don't want my experience to rub someone the wrong way based on their political affiliation or beliefs.

 

[Goro]

Strongly advise not mentioning street medic. There was a thread about this not too long ago and the clinicians and med students commenting all mentioned they disapproved of the idea. Basically, street medics run around applying band-aids.

EMT-B is often a glorified bus driver as well.

 

[Goro]

OP, see these:

Street Medic on a Medical School Resume?

Saved My First Life! Now How much do I have to lie about it?

 

[TelemarketingEnigma]

Strongly advise not mentioning street medic. There was a thread about this not too long ago and the clinicians and med students commenting all mentioned they disapproved of the idea. Basically, street medics run around applying band-aids.

EMT-B is often a glorified bus driver as well.

The issue with street medics isn't really that they can't ever do good things - there's just been a ton of people jumping on the bandwagon this year, some of which might even be doing actual harm (attempting to give aid they are unqualified for). There are a lot of other reasons it's not a good idea to put on a med school app imo, but "band aids" isn't the main one.

With all due respect, I really think you should get some exposure to the actual role of an EMT-B (with an EMS service, not street medic) before you continue to call all of them bus drivers. It's honestly pretty offensive and my experience so far in EMS and med school has been the opposite of what you repeat here regularly - both admissions staff and clinicians have generally received my and others' EMS experience well, and considered it valuable. There's definitely some bus driver EMT jobs, but that is absolutely not the case for all EMT positions. There are similarly useless scribe positions, and MA positions, and research lab positions. Some schools may rank it more highly than others, but EMT training and work experience gives you valuable practice with patient communication and management. It definitely gave me a leg up on certain clinical skills entering med school.

 

[harvard_of_the_west]

Anybody who has ever actually worked in the EMS/FIRE/Rescue world cringes at the term "street medic". At best, it sounds like you watched an episode of Nightwatch and wanted to be a hero because it looks cool. At worst, it come across as you being an illegitimate EMS worker, providing unsupervised acute care without any actual training or licensure. And you will be ridiculed for calling yourself a "medic" if you aren't actually a paramedic--EMTs are just EMTs.

Helping out at protests is nothing more than helping out. You weren't actually working on a rig, for a contracted/government agency, responding to calls you were dispatched to, under the medical direction of a physician. You could talk about your experience at protests as a catalyst for you in addressing social justice issues, but I wouldn't talk about providing medical care unless you were actually doing so in an official capacity.

 

[seanm028]

This might be a tough pill to swallow but I would not share too many of the details. I can completely relate to the desire to "jump in and help" (it was several, angsty years after I got my EMT certification before I actually got a job using it). That said, I think the biggest issue here is the lack of formal structure. You had no medical director, no protocols, no supervisor, no quality control department, no documentation, and no official accountability. You may have done tremendous good, but certainly other "street medics" have done harm. Without the infrastructure that implies "this person was supervised and did okay", adcoms will be left to wonder which type you were.

Not to mention, this issue is extremely politically charged.

 

[Tenk]

Strongly advise not mentioning street medic. There was a thread about this not too long ago and the clinicians and med students commenting all mentioned they disapproved of the idea. Basically, street medics run around applying band-aids.

EMT-B is often a glorified bus driver as well.

Or tourniquets to abrasions...



Op: don’t mention it. You’re associating yourself with people like this who know absolutely nothing about what they are doing.

 

[Princeton Medical Student]

EMT-B is often a glorified bus driver as well.

There is not a single other reasonably accessible in terms of length of training activity that allows premeds to independently care for patients in the same way that EMTs do. A small minority of EMTs work as wheelchair ambulette drivers. A decent number work in inter facility transport. The majority however work in 911 systems where they respond to the vast majority of 911 medical emergencies.

Agreed on not mentioning this though. There is way too high of a risk and too little of a reward.
Furthermore, you were not an EMT-B at a protest, unless you were operating under the license of a physician. I surely hope you didn't bring something silly like BVMs and airways to these protests and acted outside of the scope of practice of a reasonable layman.

 

[Blueprint Med School]

Avoid the term street medic like the plague. In fact, I would avoid mentioning the protests at all. Everything surrounding them is so polarized and all it could easily end up looking like you are playing medical vigilante.

David D, MD, EMT-B - USMLE and MCAT Tutor
Med School Tutors

 

[Gilakend]

There is not a single other reasonably accessible in terms of length of training activity that allows premeds to independently care for patients in the same way that EMTs do. A small minority of EMTs work as wheelchair ambulette drivers. A decent number work in inter facility transport. The majority however work in 911 systems where they respond to the vast majority of 911 medical emergencies.

Agreed on not mentioning this though. There is way too high of a risk and too little of a reward.
Furthermore, you were not an EMT-B at a protest, unless you were operating under the license of a physician. I surely hope you didn't bring something silly like BVMs and airways to these protests and acted outside of the scope of practice of a reasonable layman.

I was an EMT-B and really enjoyed it, but Goro is largely correct. Unless you work/can work somewhere with a medic/basic trucks so you can do 911 calls, I would say CNA gives you better experiences.

Just my two cents. Again, really enjoyed both my time doing transfers and my time doing emergencies, but for most people in most areas (I worked in a rural area which is why it was medic/basic) I think CNA is the money move.

 

[Princeton Medical Student]

I was an EMT-B and really enjoyed it, but Goro is largely correct. Unless you work/can work somewhere with a medic/basic trucks so you can do 911 calls, I would say CNA gives you better experiences.

Just my two cents. Again, really enjoyed both my time doing transfers and my time doing emergencies, but for most people in most areas (I worked in a rural area which is why it was medic/basic) I think CNA is the money move.

In my area, the trucks are split, meaning BLS EMT/EMT trucks, and ALS medic/medic trucks. If an emergency requires ALS, both trucks respond, and usually either both medics stay in the back with the patient with both EMTs driving the vehicles, or one of the medics staying with the patients. Vast majority of calls are handled by EMTs though.