Journey To Firefighter » Bay Medic http://journeytofirefighter.com Chronicling the journey to become a firefighter in California Thu, 22 Jul 2010 02:07:59 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 EMT Training Begins… http://journeytofirefighter.com/emt-training-begins/ http://journeytofirefighter.com/emt-training-begins/#comments Fri, 07 Aug 2009 01:50:50 +0000 Josh http://journeytofirefighter.com/?p=53 I have been invited to begin training along with 4 other EMT’s beginning this Tuesday.  I don’t know exactly what to expect as the interview process was quite minimalist, but I do know that we’ll be going over lots of “orientation” stuff in the beginning.  We’ll get the legal things out of the way, go over lifting patients, using the gurney, and how to properly write a patient care report (PCR).  Other than that, I’ll have to update this post as the training continues.

Nonetheless, congratulations to me!  I am now proud to call myself an employed EMT.

One thing I’d like to note is that Bay Medic Ambulance does not have a contract with 911 which means that we do not get called to the scenes of emergencies.  We specialize in transporting the sick and injured in a safe and efficient (though sure not cheap – no ambulance company is inexpensive) manner.  For me this raises an interesting personal conflict which I believe is actually rare among ambulance jockeys.

As an EMT we want to put our skills to use.  We want to be challenged, and we want to see action.  Delivering an elderly medical patient from one facility to another is not action – it is taxi service.  On the other hand, action means that somebody is suffering.  It means getting excited at the prospect of another’s pain and misfortune; two things which don’t excite me.  Nonetheless, as an EMT, I want to be involved in that.

To be clear (and I believe this is shared among the majority of EMT’s), it’s not that I want bad things to happen to people, but if they’re going to happen anyway, I want to be there.  …to help of course.

My point in this is that I don’t expect action with Bay Medic, but I am thrilled to have the job and I am very, very curious to find out if I will actually see some excitement or if I am merely destined to learn the county hospitals better than I ever could have imagined.  We’ll see…..

Read a great description of the EMT job.

]]> http://journeytofirefighter.com/emt-training-begins/feed/ 5 EMT To Be? http://journeytofirefighter.com/emt-to-be/ http://journeytofirefighter.com/emt-to-be/#comments Sat, 01 Aug 2009 04:40:42 +0000 Josh http://journeytofirefighter.com/?p=26 Today I interviewed to be an EMT.  On Monday I called Bay Medic Ambulance to see if they’d received the application I sent in.  I was told yes, they had, but they wouldn’t be running a new training class for 3 months.  Wednesday they called me to schedule an interview for Friday (today).

Passing my EMT class and then the National Registry Exam wasn’t easy.  I’ve done some, but not a whole lot of brushing up since since, and I was a little worried about the questions I’d be asked at my interview.  Fortunately it turned out not to be a problem.  The interview focused less on my specific text-book/lab knowledge and more on me as a whole.

My impression is that they want to know that I’ll present professionally and that I have the basic qualifications.  They do their own training from there, and it sounds like a lot from what I’m told.

It seemed apparent to me that Bay Medic has got their hiring down to an efficient science of finding trainable EMT’s.

Within 4 days I’ll know if I’m included in this new training class and either way, I’ll be positing it here.

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