Why I Left EMS

I've gotten hundreds of emails asking me why I left my EMS career. Ok, not hundreds... but close... like... three... so, I thought instead of having to write three separate emails, I'd just blog about it here and save all that extra work bandwidth.

Back in 1985 I was truly lost. I was in my second year of college studying Music Composition and miserable. I had no idea what I was going to do with my life but I knew that I wasn't prolific enough to make any money at writing music; the music has a mind of its own - it gets written when it damn well feels like getting written and not before!

I was sad, lonely (all my friends had gone away to school) and trying to figure out what to do with my life.

One day, I was flipping through the college catalog of courses trying to fill up some electives when I saw "EMT Class". I read through the description, saw that I would be able to view a real, live surgery and ride on an ambulance as an observor for a day and I signed up. I had watched the TV show "Emergency!" religiously as a child and had always been drawn to situations where I could "rescue" people, so it just seemed to make sense. I was scared to death, though, on my first day, as the thought of having human life in my hands was petrifying.

I was scared for all of about 22 minutes, then everything in life just fell into place. I had found my niche. Nothing I'd ever done had come so easily and naturally to me. That's how I knew it was absolutely the perfect job for me. Everything I learned, everything we put into practice on mannequins and in labs, absolutely made sense to me. Every bit of it.

I put everything I had into EMT class, got certified, and after doing some volunteer work to make sure I could handle the things I'd see and do, I enrolled in EMICT class, which in Kansas means "Paramedic". It was 15 months of grueling work, but I poured my heart into it and graduated with a 94% average. I passed boards and became a Paramedic in 1988.

Being the demanding, perfectionistic person I am, I expected the best of myself and those around me at all times. There was never one day when I didn't take my job and its responsibilities seriously. It never felt like a burden, or overly "stressful", because I just fit so perfectly in that role.

The only problem I had was that some of the people I had to work with, and even the administrators of EMS, didn't have the same drive for perfection. They didn't have the same high standards and sense of responsibility for others that I had, and I was constantly finding myself in battle with those around me.

I had many a run-in with the administration, who thought me less than diplomatic in expressing my concerns (I was) and overly aggressive in my methods of treating patients. Looking back, I can see now that, because it all came so naturally for me, it was easy to be damn good at it. Others weren't living their "calling" - it was just a job to them - so naturally, their standards and mine collided.

Thanks to the teachings of a few truly great paramedics that influenced not only my career, but my life (Randy, Chris, Dave, Craig, etc.), I never compromised on my standards. Throughout my thirteen year career I held to my belief that paramedics could be more than "ambulance drivers" and they could truly effect the outcome of a person's life, or determine whether they had a life at all, by their action or nonaction.

As I tried to pass this knowledge on to students and new hires, some of it rubbed off on the people I call "sponges" and bounced right off the people I call "rocks". Sponges absorb knowledge and rocks resist it, especially if it means overextending themselves. I'm proud to say that there are paramedics on the street today that have taken a little of what I offered and put it to good use in saving lives. There are others that I booted right out of their internships that probably to this day still hate my guts, but I think the streets are safer without them. Paramedicine isn't something you do for a paycheck - there's just too much at stake. And if my students didn't show even the remotest of natural, innate ability or common sense, they were shown the door rather quickly.

In my career, I watched not only the standard of care of EMS drop unbelievably low, but medicine as a whole. I began to tire of fighting the system, the people around me and not being given the tools I needed to take the very best care of my patients. Our ambulances were getting more maintenance than the paramedics were, and to me, that was unacceptable. Training was a joke, yearly recertification was a farce as the administration hand fed us information we already knew and called it "continuing education", and the students coming out of paramedic classes grew dumber and dumber. It became impossible to flunk them, as the power was stripped from us as preceptors for monetary and political reasons. If the student paid the tab, they'd get the certification whether they were competent or not.

After thirteen years, I decided I couldn't watch it any longer. I knew I was getting older, feeling the strain of the physical demands and long hours more every year, tired of working all night (7 PM - 7 AM) and sleeping my daylight away, and certainly tired of those abusing the 911 system. Third was a shift I chose to work, as it afforded me less time with the brass and more of the "action" calls, which I loved, but it started to wear on me and ontop of everything else, I decided enough was enough.

In 1999, at the age of 35, I finished my college degree in Computer Information Systems and left EMS. I didn't really know WHAT in computers I wanted to do, but I knew I enjoyed troubleshooting and seemed to have an intuitive knack for it, much like I did with paramedicine. I took an entry level job as a PC tech once I graduated and that's where I've been ever since.

Now, I find myself feeling a lot like I did before I found my niche in EMS - lost, miserable and searching for something meaningful to do with my life again. EMS was my identity for so long, that it's been terribly difficult to shake the loss I feel at having let it go. It was the right thing to do, and I know that, but I still miss it every day. There's a light at the end of the tunnel, as B and I have a little sideline multimedia business that, among other things, affords me the opportunity to live my dream of being a filmmaker. I do digital video editing and production in the evenings, which I truly love, and it allows me to get lost in time as I make watchable productions of people's home movies, old photographs and favorite music. I could definitely do this full time, and I hope if our business continues to grow as it is, that we'll be able to quit our jobs and be self employed before too long.

So there you have it - a short story made long, but it was good for me to put it down in writing to save for posterity. So thanks for being curious, or I would never have gotten this out. :)

Posted by Cranky at May 24, 2002 08:57 PM