I imagine we have all worked patients in the field where a bystander has exclaimed “I’m a nurse! get out of the way, lowly paramedic!” or something loosely to that extent. And yeah, it really irks me when it happens. It feels like a big shot in the face a lot of the time, both to me personally, and to all of my colleagues in this profession.

Along the same line though, I think I blushed a bit last week from the hallway when a teacher enthusiastically told her students “The paramedics are great – they know everything nowadays!” when I dropped by a little early to pick up a nursing student friend from class and overheard them conversing about the paramedics’ role in prehospital care.

I guess it goes both ways. Many nurses love us, but there are still some (a lot of them “oldschool”) who can’t believe we’re even allowed to backboard people, haha. I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that we are just seen bringing the patients into ER – most hospital staff never get the opportunity to see the things we can do before we hand off. This, I believe, is a big part of why some still think of us simply as “ambulance drivers”.

JS

Ckemtp, I am excited to be on this site to join with such a strong group of fellow bloggers such as yourself. I am looking forard to participating in the EMS 2.0 discussions.

Matt, it is going to be a long road for EMS to reach what the nurses have achieved. They have been here much longer than we have. It certainly starts with being the best profesionals we can be. I will try to address this in a longer post sometime in the next month. Thanks for posing a great question.

PC