Pros
Good equipment, average pay, work with some really cool fellow EMTs.
Cons
OK. So I was working for another ambulance service before I came here, and that place was great. The pay was consistent with everyone else, but the working environment was stellar. However, I wanted to run 911 calls, so I quit and came here. I have been with Care for just over a year, and while it's OK, it is not what I thought it was going to be. Yes, I'm running lights and sirens throughout my shift, and yes that's really cool, but that's really where my 911 experience begins and ends. Once we get on scene of the fire call, 99 times of out 100 my partners and I have to stand there with our gurney while the fire guys work up the patient. When they're all done and it's time to load up, they all stand back and then my partner and I put the patient on the gurney. In the last year, I've hooked up one patient to the 12-lead, and I've set up maybe three IV bags. The only times that I actually get to use my EMT skills is either when we're first on scene (and that's usually for about one minute), or when we're doing an IFT. It's hard to believe that I used my EMT skills more at my previous (non-911) ambulance service than I do now. When I ask my fellow Care EMTs about it, yup, the overwhelming majority of the time, we're human IV poles for the fire departments. I'm not ripping on Fire, not at all. It's just the way it is. It's a good place to work, but in all honesty, if you think that you're going to be involved in fire calls, where you're ankle deep in blood and guts, and helping the fire guys with assessments and patient care on scene, you're in for a big surprise. I'm not saying that I made a bad decision to quit my other ambulance job to here, but this is NOT what I was led to believe it would be. Oh and one more thing... at my previous job, the GM and the supervisor were on a first name basis with all of us. This is an international mega corporation, and you're definitely an employee number, here.