Cheap, Fast and Easy

I listened quietly as the young woman in my office told her story. She had been offered a promotion that came not only with more responsibility and more compensation, but also with a future opportunity to transition into upper management at the ambulance service where she works. Everything was looking fine, until the question of having a degree arose. The company was adamant that the person in this job should have, at a minimum, an associate’s degree. But senior management also wanted her to do the job, so they agreed to work with her schedule to allow her to complete her degree; however, she had to demonstrate continuous progress with her efforts to do so. That was what brought her to me—to see what credits would or would not transfer in her degree quest.

I asked for a copy of her transcripts, but received only a copy of a letter stating that she had passed a paramedic course. The letter broke down the various hour requirements to graduate, which as I recall was about 650 total hours, but there was no mention of credits awarded.

In the end, I found that she’d taken a state-approved paramedic course, but not one that was affiliated with a degree-granting institution. This meant I had to break the bad academic news—eight months of paramedic school, no college credits. She would have to start at square one.

While researching her situation, I spoke with Gregg Margolis, associate director for the National Registry of EMTs. A veteran EMS educator, Margolis hit the nail on the head when he noted that, almost without fail, stories like this involve an ambitious EMT-B getting tangled up with a training program whose three main qualities are “cheap, fast and easy.” This month, let’s look at the impact on you and your future when you select a paramedic program based on the wrong reasons.

Cheap

Making the jump from EMT-B to paramedic is both time-consuming and expensive, usually totaling somewhere between $2,500–$10,000. Coupled with the fact that most paramedic students have to work while attending school, but they only get in about 12 to 30 hours a week, it’s easy math: less income, big outlay. Not a pretty fiscal sight for young people just a year or two out of high school, who are still coming to grips with being on their own and responsible for their own bills. Under these circumstances, it’s only logical that program cost would be a major factor in deciding where to go to school. However, it’s important to recognize how much service and support are cut in pursuit of cheap.

First, let me make a couple of points before I launch into the matter of cheap. One: There are some fine nontraditional outreach courses taught around the country. Two: Cost is by no means a sole measure of quality, nor is academic-based training, but both are certainly important factors.

That being said, most bargain-basement medic courses are taught off campus, often by a medic who has decided to branch out into education or an instructor who is moonlighting. The instructor may be affiliated with an institution of higher learning, or may have attained course approval through the state EMS office—usually the latter.

When someone has a limited budget because of small class size (4–8 students) and is trying to make a living as a freelance EMS instructor, it can turn into cost-cutting at every corner. At a National Registry test site, a student once told me that at the paramedic program she attended, there were no actual skills labs. The class learned about various pieces of equipment only by seeing pictures. The young lady was touching the equipment that she was going to be tested on shortly for the very first time. As you would expect, the results were poor.

Few to no handouts and printed materials, one instructor, no support staff to provide student services, and shoddy or inadequate equipment for skills practice are just some of the more common circumstances when cheap is the choice.