And Get Off My Lawn!

10 comments

My friend Too Old to Work, Too Young To Retire lays the smackdown on the younger EMS generation and their work ethic (or lack thereof). The money quote:

Chivalry might not be dead, but it’s not working tonight.

I ROFL'ed at that one, and I'm adding it to the many lines I've stolen from my friend over the years.

At the risk of sounding like an old guy myself – and TOTWTYTR was a veteran when I was a rookie – I've noticed the same thing myself with the under-thirty set. So is it a generational thing, or the type of people we're attracting to EMS these days?

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Posted by Ambulance Driver on September 18, 2011 • Filed under: EMT's Behaving Badly, Sweet linky love

Penguin

It’s a generational thing, I think. Most kids these days have everything they could ever want handed to them on a silver platter. A smartphone at 13, a new car at 16, a downpayment or damage deposit on their own place at 18, not to mention tuition paid for, so they’re coming out scot-free. With laziness and an attitude to match. Nothing has value because they’ve never actually had to work for anything in their lives.
MK Kelly

In defense of other younger female EMTs like myself….there are times I really can’t lift the patient by myself! I try, but there are some times where, midlift, my knees buckle, my eyes go wide and I frantically mouth “PLEASE HELP NOW!!” and hopefully someone will come over and *help* me with the patient (as in not totally take over and make me stand there, looking/feeling completely useless)

That being said, I’ve also had the other problem, where some men I work with believe I can’t even be trusted to put the stair chair back in its nice little cubby hole.

To quote Parapup (not to be crude), “I have a vagina, not a disability!”

TOTWTYTR, I would LOVE to work with you and prove you wrong!! Save my generation’s reputation!
Medic48@Egidi.org

Yeah. That’s why at 26 I am paying rent, car loan, and student loans.

You know the problem with the prior generations? They all make sweeping generalizations….
Suz

It’s mostly generational. MK Kelly, you have your work cut out for you, saving your generation’s reputation. So many of your peers have never learned to be responsible; they’ve learned to do what they can get away with. Mom, Dad, and whatever hapless suckers they can recruit, have been bailing them out their entire lives. Many of them will eventually learn, but they will lose opportunities and irritate lots of people along the way. Those who, like you, learned responsibility before being set loose in the adult world, will get ahead far more easily. I hope your parents are proud.
Fern the Fire-Rescue newbie

This may be true, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t right. Each generation keeps saying that they’re better than the previous ones, but really are we?

The day where common sense makes a return is the day I will say that I am a member of a great generation. Quite frankly, right now, we suck.
Anonymous

Every generation thinks theirs had it tougher.

Personally, I think part of the problem is that we attract the wrong people into EMS. The ones who resent anything other than an exciting emergency call as unworthy of their training and talents, tend to look at things like compassion, rig cleaning and station duties as something that must be endured, and not part of the job.

The people who have that attitude are generally the younger EMT’s, because they haven’t been in EMS long enough to learn what the profession is really about. And they either learn that, or get out relatively early, to be replaced by more who think just like them.
Fern the Fire-Rescue newbie

But there is also the problem that we only teach about the emergency setting. Nothing about transfers, or even mention of ER tech jobs.

It always comes back to education in some form or another. Whether it be common sense and upbringing, or in the classroom.
Chrystoph

Personal experience: First let me say that I am a former EMT-B, prior to debilitating knee injuries taking me out of service, both military and EMS.

I had a moderately severe reaction to something one night, finding myself short of breath from cramping and in enough pain that I could not talk. I managed to get my wife to call the local 911 in Mankato, MN and got a deputy sheriff first responder. He was in his late 40′s and treated it well. His only fail was an empty O2 tank that he had never used before.

The pair of bus drivers that answered the call, on the other hand, were bloody useless. Both looked to be about 24-26 y.o. and more concerned with their uniforms than the patient. With nothing more than an incredibly brief visual assessment, they decided I was having a panic attack and nearly refused to take me to the hospital. They insisted I get myself down the 17 steps of our 2nd floor apartment.

The ED immediately doped me out of my mind. I am told there were four separate meds involved. One of these two morons waited until they were done, then tried to get my legally not competent self to give him insurance information. They ignored my wife up until they wanted to be paid.

My only viable response, unfortunately, was to recommend them be fired in the customer satisfaction survey.
Prmedc

It’s odd that the laziest medics I know all have over ten years on the job. Then again, the hardest worker I know has around twenty years in EMS. However, I see the “if the new guy doesn’t go clean the rig, it just won’t get done” quite a bit more than “the new guy won’t help me clean the rig”.

I’m pretty sure lazy people have always been around. Perhaps one’s age (or lack thereof) simply makes it more irritating.
Penguin

I’m younger than you are What I wrote is simply my own opinion of the people my own age I see around me. I, too, pay a mortgate, car payments, and various loans. We are the lucky ones.