Change of pace

I imagine my post here will change a bit, for a while. I'm rotating off the ambulance for the first time in almost two years. We have a student coming to our station who is assigned to the medic unit for 1-2 months. This means I'll be "riding backwards" on the engine. Thinking about this, I decided to clarify some terms.

First of all, our fire department provides emergency medical services. This means the ambulances are run by the fire department, and the same people working on the ambulance one day might be working on the engine the next. That means I am a firefighter and a paramedic, on every day. There is no delineation of duties, other than only those guys on the ambulance transport to the hospital and the ambulance doesn't respond to fire alarms. Firefighter do medicine and paramedics fight fires. One and the same on our department.

When you call 911 for a medical emergency, you usually get a fire engine and a medic unit. This is because there are more engines than medics, so chances are the guys on the engine will get there sooner. It also provides more bodies, when needed, to provide the best care.

The day to day difference to me is that I provide more of a supportive role to the attending paramedic. I may start the call, but the attending paramedic will be transporting to the hospital. I'll "ride in" as an extra pair of hands on critical calls. Meanwhile, I'll start responding to fire alarms (quite possibly the bane of my existence), CO alarms, and gas leaks. Hopefully, I'll still have some interesting stuff to post here.

Wow. Thus endeth the PSA/educational brief on engines and ambulances.