Feast or Famine

I’ve learned that EMS is very feast or famine—you’re either busy, or you’re not. Recently, I haven’t been busy. Now I know that I’ve posted in the past about being too busy, but right now I’m only running (on average) one call per 24-hour shift. In some ways, I feel like I’m not pulling weight.

In some ways, it sounds great, right? Getting paid to sit around all day—yeah, not so much. First of all, it gets boring. And secondly, it makes me a little concerned.

The rumor mill in my company is always working, and right now, the rumor is that our parent company has laid off medics and EMTs at some of our sister companies. Apparently (according to the rumor), ours is the only company that is managing to keep its “numbers” up. That’s concerning because we only have so much control over our numbers. We can’t control the number of 911 calls we take or the number of transfers we send, the only thing we have any influence over is our transport rate. As a private company, we need to transport patients to pay the bills. No county subsidy for us.

It used to be that health care had job security written all over. People will always get sick and we will always need the EMTs, nurses, and doctors to take care of them. But here’s a news story that makes me shiver: the Oregon Health Sciences University in Portland may cut up to 1000 jobs of its 12,900 employees. That’s almost 8% of its total work force. My partner’s wife works at OHSU and he’s worried. Now, I’m high enough on the seniority least in my company that my job isn’t in questions, but I worry about my friends and coworkers.

Feast or famine—and right now, it is very much famine.