Education: Leave It To the Professionals

I’m tired – sick and tired – of these medics with ten, fifteen, or even twenty years of experience trying to teach younger EMS professionals about our profession. Let’s be honest: medical knowledge evolves quickly. And so many of these older medics haven’t seriously paid attention to new studies in years. Meaning their knowledge of medicine is severely limited.

I’m going to say something not everyone will like: if you’ve been a medic for more than ten years, your license should be revoked. And yeah, I know, ‘continuing education units’, blah blah blah. But if you’re like me, then you actively avoid those classes. And if you ARE forced to attend one, you sit at the back and take a nap. Or it’s an online class and you watch YouTube videos about how to fix a bad dye job while Jimmy from some no-name fire department explains how albuterol works. We get it – it’s a beta 1 antagonist.

But the worst is when these so called veterans try to teach younger members their knowledge (and I use the term “knowledge” loosely).

I remember being a young paramedic, still in my third attempt at getting through medical school, when an older male medic sat down and tried telling me that IVs shouldn’t be inserted at a 90 degree angle. Like, how else are you supposed to feel the vein pop? It’s even more gross when a man is trying to teach me. Like, I get it, you’re just hitting on me. Gross.

Anyway, once I’m in charge of my own agency, I’ll make sure to not hire anyone over the age of 40. That’s just too old to be useful.