Supervisors- Some of them speak above you, as if you are an idiot and don’t deserve to be in there presence.
Transfers- I myself coming from a volunteer 911 company did not want to do transfers but if that’s your cup of tea it may be your Pro, I fortunately moved to a district where we do 99% 911 and very rarely will get pulled for a transfer if our transfer side is backed up.
Pay- Could be better paid for the hours, I’ve seen companies who are willing to pay 5-6$ more an hour, but then again they offer little to no insurance or overtime.
Money Hungry- When I say this it may be different in some eyes, but this company is the most money hungry company I’ve seen. I do understand we are not paid by tax dollars unlike Fire Departments and County EMS. But, whenever we get a refusal on a patient it hurts your AMPS score (score that can be used to get you a raise) so in other words, if I can’t convince Ole Miss Mary that her stubbed toe to go to the hospital via my ambulance it hurts my score to possibly get a promotion of some sort. But, it doesn’t hurt it extremely bad, but we all know that you can get multiple refusals in a day that is not under our control, if someone does not want to go to the hospital that doesn’t need to go, why do I get punished for it? Also, you’re always told you need to get IV starts, and have all of these things done for patients that really don’t need certain interventions because again, MONEY.
Management- At times they’re great and I could not complain such as overtime, anytime you’re willing to pick up overtime or pick up a shift that someone backed out last minute the supervisors love you, but the minute you tell them no for whatever reason they seem to forget all the times you’ve done them favors and they push you aside, favoritism definitely runs in this company.
Sick days/Vacation- Your vacation days and sick days acquire extremely slow in this company for me, compared to my first job.
Dispatch- At times they are great and give you everything and anything you need. Other times they are like monkeys. For example, when they put information into the CAD that is incorrect and you get a sent back on one of your reports it hurts you AMPS score, sure you can call CDC and tell them to remove the sent back from your record due to dispatches information being incorrect. But on 2 occasions I’ve called CDC and told them to remove incorrect sent backs and they didn’t. Which brings me to my next con.
CDC- They are the company who goes through your reports and decides wether or not it’s to there “liking” They’re like Dispatch, sometimes helpful other times like monkeys. I’ve had sent backs on a few occasions where there was nothing wrong, but they didn’t read through my narrative all the way or they missed something once again hurting my amps score.
Protocols- From what I’ve been told, Paramedic’s are extremely limited compared to other companies. Also, a new protocol recently put into effect is they are now telling me how to write MY reports by there standard which is ACHARTE. I’ve done my reports the same for almost 2 years now, and never had a problem. But they want me to follow there method which I disagree with for many reasons but manly, if I was to go to court it is my license on the line NOT there’s. If I can’t remember the call because of ACHART that’s on me, not them.
