If you're interested in this field, consider remote work; wilderness, expeditions, offshore. Potentially much more interesting than city work and scope of practice around the world differs, so there is sometimes the opportunity to be more involved.

Have a look at the Award in Remote Emergency Medical Technician[1] from the College of Remote and Offshore Medicine. It's 75 hours of online study, then a 6 day course in their classroom in Malta (another 50 hours). Afterwards you'll hold a recognised European tertiary qualification, but you'll still have to sort out local registration.

The AREMT course is actually also the first module in their full BSc in Remote Paramedic Practice programme.[2]

[1] https://corom.edu.mt/award-in-remote-emergency-medical-techn...

[2] https://corom.edu.mt/bsc-in-rpp/

Friend of mine was an EMT, and he advanced on and became a paramedic.

The work seemed to suit him, he enjoyed it. I'd hang out with him at his base of operations (he was a private paramedic in LA County).

Then, one day, he quit.

He quit, and didn't renew his certification.

And he won't talk about it, and, boy, yea, did he have some stories.

But something got to him.

I have written about this before here on HN.

I obtained a BS in Aerospace Engineer in 1998. After job jumping several times I realized I didn't care for it. I was basically a "paper" engineer, which was my fault as I never pursued jobs that did "real" engineering.

Anyway, around 2003/2004 I went to night school for EMT. The purpose was to be a dive master on dive boats (I was/am a dive master - I don't dive anymore). It was fun.

My engineering job sucked so I jumped into paramedic school right after EMT. I really enjoyed it. About a month from graduating PM school, county fire department came in to class and said they would hire paramedic only but we would have to cross train to firefighter.

In Feb 2006 I was 35 yo with a 9 month old baby and decided if I didn't do it then I never would so I applied and got hired then department put me through fire school.

It was the best career decision of my life. It didn't take long to see a bunch of people get hurt from the job, so I figured I better have a back up plan since I also have chronic health issues. From 2010 to 2015 I did an online Masters degree in CS. After completing it I started working part time remote jobs as a developer.

Then COVID hit in 2020 and they pulled me out of the field due to my health issues. I turned 50 and was getting tired after 14 years. I started applying to full time jobs and landed one.

In 2022 I switched jobs again for a better org and I am still here. I just switched positions from Java dev to cloud engineer in May.

I absolutely enjoyed 85+% of FF/pm but it is a young person's game. It gave me confidence I probably never would have found. Again, it was literally the best career move I ever made and would recommend anyone to do it.

The Coursera course led by an MD will give you a good idea of the content of the class and can help you decide if you want the license: https://coursera.org/specializations/become-an-emt

This is a surprisingly interesting and relevant post to me that I decided to make an account to comment. I worked in IT and eventually as a programmer for 6 years, had a rough point in my life, and decided to take some time to reconsider my goals. I had always been interested in the medical field, and this was as good an opportunity as ever to do something new. I got my license and now am lucky to work 911 rescue in a larger city, both high call volume and high acuity (5 to 10 calls in 12 hours just on my truck).

Pros: - Societal good: There are few who would argue Emergency Medical personnel do harm. Being able to visibly see your work improving people's lives and contributing directly to the public good is incredibly self gratifying. - Handling emergencies: I am the one people call when things go wrong, in charge of patient care, managing scenes on the medical side. - Problem solving: each situation is unique. Assessing situations, determining patient care, and actively working difficult scenes can be fun and helps fulfill my unmedicated ADHD needs. - Handing out ambulance stickers to kids.

Cons: - Smells - Limited medical scope: I stop bleeding, give people oxygen, and get them to the hospital. I have very few medications, cannot intubate, and am not allowed to interpret an ECG. Paramedic is a 14 month program minimum that is a much larger time and money commitment, and even then, doctors are the ones that actually end up managing full patient care and make final decisions. - Pay: I took a very large pay cut. I knew this would happen, and I was incredibly burnt out at my previous job, but the medical field, especially first responders, gets away with low pay and high hours because they often rely on passion and many new people entering the field at the lower levels.

Ultimately, I still have not figured out what I want to do long term. I could go back to programming, but with the current job market, that seems inadvisable. THe medical field will pretty much always guarantee some job. I do want to pivot (still have not completed college), but see above untreated ADHD along with a few other personal things I need to work on. Nursing has higher pay, but puts you underneath doctors such that you rarely make independent medical decisions. And paramedic/firefighter is nice, but hard on the body plus issues in the culture previously discussed.

For anyone considering it, I do recommend taking a class. You can do it in 4 months with a one day a week class (how I did it), and volunteer somewhere. But understand the tradeoffs and recognize that is far from glamorous most of the time.

I kind of did this in reverse lol. I was an EMT on private ambulance for 5 years, went to paramedic school, then dropped out and became a software engineer. Coming from the other side, I can definitely relate to the experience of delaying something you want to do for reasons that, in hindsight, were mostly irrational.

OP: I've wanted to be an EMT for a long time, but I made excuses for years. I wanted to share some of them with y'all; maybe they resonate with you, or inspire you to do something you've been putting off.

Because worst-case, you might enjoy it.

How about: raging PTSD? A former buddy of mine had that like crazy, and apparently it's rampant in the profession (of course it is!).

Also, they (BC Ambulance) treat you like garbage when you need assistance, and effectively force you back to work or to go find a job elsewhere.

It's shocking how badly we treat the people that willingly take on life's hardest challenges (for low pay, I might add). It's amazing any are even left after all that BS.

What is the time commitment for a volunteer EMT?

I like it when people are willing (and capable, writing-wise) to wear their hearts on their sleeve like that.

Also, I bet the whole blog post's worth would flash through the author's mind within all of 10 seconds whenever they were reminded of the possibility of taking the course. It takes both patience and self-discipline to put it all on paper like that.

Great blog post! Makes me want to take an EMT course :-)

I would've expected a top reason to be the possibility of seeing mutilated bodies, dead babies and children, and other fun stuff like that. EMTs on this thread, how do you cope with that?

There has to be a toll seeing people suffer probably one of the lowest points of their lives, seeing kids die, seeing brutality like that where an EMT is warranted.

You probably pay the cost.

David Lee Roth did it.

Going on a slight tangent, I wanted to do the same thing but with firefighting instead. One thing I've found is that a good portion of your time is supposedly spent doing fundraisers

My dad liked to tell me about cadaver college because I gag at the thought or sight of gore and that's kept me working on trees, cars and computers and not humans

I have a brother-in-law with a pretty textbook case of ADHD (and a more than a bit of combat related PTSD) who worked up through EMT/Paramedic to being a nurse to being basically top of the heap. He did cardiac surgery nurse for a while, then ran an ER, and these days he's doing contracts. Seems to me (as an observer) that the chaos he works with dovetails with 'effective' part of ADHD and he's very successful. Tangent: since you have some background in IT, you'll be able to handle Epic and the other EHR systems with little problem and you will be very popular amongst your coworkers.

As far as the job...things for entry/junior level in IT are frankly extremely bleak. I haven't seen an entry level job rec get approved in maybe a year. And I'm watching lots of my peers getting let go; it's a bad time to be old or young in IT. OTOH...not just my BiL but my wife is in health care, and whatever downside the job holds, 'no one is hiring' and 'they're laying off folks left and right' are absolutely not something they are worrying about.

And no matter what the downsides, no matter the lack of appreciation and compensation, you're actually helping people. That's better than most of us. Best of luck.

> Cons: Smells

I'm curious about this...?

> Nursing has higher pay, but puts you underneath doctors such that you rarely make independent medical decisions

But a good nurse can listen and advocate for patients in a very impactful way!