Good point, I was hoping someone would get to it. I was a paramedic for 12 years in a county EMS service. I scraped people off of highways, cut them from cars, went into numerous unsecured crime scenes, and resuscitated people in small bathrooms while family members screamed at me. It retrospect, it seems as if it was 110 degrees or pouring torrential rain during a good part of it. With standing orders, I acted autonomously for nearly all of the care that I delivered and often had to make split second decisions for many of my patients. I have been kicked, spit on, kneed, grabbed in the ol' boys, and cursed at on many occasions. My reward for this job? A cool 30k per year is what I was recieving WHEN I LEFT! This is what an associates degree in emergency medicine will get you where I am from (after experience of course). Certainly I stayed in the profession because I loved it, not for the salary. The nurses that I transferred my patients to? They were recieving upwards of 60-70k per year. Those that had respect for us often lamented about how little we were paid for what we did.
In my years on the job, I have seen many nurses, physicians, and paramedics that were not up to par. I have been an advocate for my patients (against both nurses and physicians), only to have to have them dismiss my opinions, misdiagnose, or ignore the patient as drunk/faking/ok/etc. I watched some of these patients die. Somehow "I told you so" always felt so empty. Although everyone makes mistakes occasionally, it is inexcusable to do it with indifference.
Some of the nurses were horrible towards EMS personnel. They would tell us we should not be allowed to do "xyz", belittle us in front of patients and family, and could sometimes be downright hostile. If there was any crap to roll downhill, we were the ones to catch it. For the most part I was friendly with the majority of them and we had a mutual respect for each other; we both had a job to do. But those few seemed to make life hell and tainted my perception of the entire profession.
I am hesitant to get into the nursing board versus EMS debate, but I would like to point out a few things. The nursing board has struggled and lobbied to maintain their stronghold on the nursing profession and the high salaries it possesses by keeping prehospital emergency medicine from advancing. While they feel it is ok for nurses to operate outside of the confines of a hospital, and to challenge the paramedic exam without formal instruction, the reverse is not the case (although paramedics do have limited rights inside of hospitals in my state now). There is also a push by nursing associations to have only nursing staff allowed on aeromedical flights as paramedics are apparently not deemed competent or trainable for that environment. The expanded scope of practice for paramedics is not viewed favorably by the nursing profession either. Quite simply, prehospital providers where I am from view almost the entire nursing profession as arrogant (perhaps the culture is different elsewhere). Most prehospital providers do not believe that they could operate in a peds ward, post op, or even an ER without further training. The reverse is not true of many nurses. Our profession requires unique skills and a unique perspective, a lot of which is taught on the streets. To believe that a nursing degree provides these skills is ridiculous. Having known many paramedics that later went on to become nurses, most felt that the education recieved was inflated just to support the salary. Likewise, most practical skills were taught later on the job.
My intent is not to bash the nursing profession (although I suppose I have vented a bit). But, it is with great irony that I read these same accusations leveled against physicians. I wish that I could have sympathy for those in the nursing profession that feel as if they are underpaid, held back, not respected, and looked down upon by physicians. The truth is, even though I have many friends that are nurses, as a profession, I have little sympathy. Sometimes you reap what you sow. As a whole nurses do an incredible job that is often thankless. But before the profession starts slinging allegations about others, perhaps they should clean up their own profession and the double standards inherent to it.
