i work in emergency services (EMS specifically) and we get the most insane fucking work hours at least where i am. i was on 8:00 to 20:00 monday then tuesday i am on 20:00 to 8:00 and wednesday i am on 10:00 to 00:00 then thursday i am on from 8:00 to 17:00 then off friday and unknown if i am working this weekend yet
i dont physically know how your brain is supposed to function enough to not accidentally kill someone when you are working like that.
also i have to be 30 minutes early to check off the unit because those are just the hours i am actively available for 911 calls and each day i am on a different truck with an unknown crew before me so i cant even know that everything works when i get there.
and i am sick but cant call out because i took a covid/flu test and didnt test positive and no matter how sick i am unless i am rendered physically unable to work or test positive for one of those i cant call out
That broke me in EMS. We were the fleet for the hospital ER, so I’d rotate between the two biweekly. 24 hour on-off shifts at the fire station, 12 hour AM or PM shifts at the hospital, randomly called in for administrative things and covering coworkers on my days off. In total I was working like 80-100 hour weeks and running on autopilot. Even worse, we had a hard standard of being out the door within 90 seconds of the alarm going off. I could be dead asleep after a call 23 hours into a shift and then have to be in full action mode the moment a noise occurs, sometimes doing CPR within five minutes of waking up. Both of those had such a disastrous impact on my sleep that it’s still fucked up a decade later.
Also work EMS. Been doing this for like 20 years now. Fuck that comrade, call out. Its a bluff, and if its not, theyre pants-shittingly incompetent and dont deserve your labor.
For all their dipshit bluster, your management sure as fuck isnt hopping on the truck to replace 60-80 manhours of labor, arent willing to hire enough crews to deal with shortages, and dont have enough VSTs to keep their trucks in regulation. They probably cant afford the unemployment claim for firing a healthcare worker for being sick.
EMS jobs arent rare most places. Theres a mom & pop medifraud NET LLC around the corner that probably doesnt even piss-test. You can be taking grandma to dialysis tomorrow and be pulling a not-dissimilar paycheck. Your health is worth more than this job, and none of this has to be your emergency.
i am at the mom and pop medifraud now, i am trying to get on at a county because this place is trying to force me to stay “part time” and not give me the promotion from driver to emt i was supposed to get when i got out of emt school while putting me on way over full time hours and having me operate as an emt
My condolences comrade, don’t let them treat you that way. Get stable and get out of there, their competitors are hiring. The only way to get a raise in this field is job-hopping anyways.
Know its easier said than done, but its either that or sabotage until the place goes under, which i also approve of.
honestly i already short my milages all i can without getting caught because they charge by the tenth of the mile typically i can cut it by at least a tenth maybe 2 to subtly undercharge the pt
Get yourself some hangover bags for a rainy day, see how long you can ride in the breakdown lane before you pop a tire, talk to your coworkers about how much this sucks and how its all management’s fault. With Pt care be kind, its not their fault, its capitalism’s, and remember if it wasnt documented, it didnt happen as far as billing is concerned.
i dont ride in the breakdown lane but i may have to now
What exactly is mom & pop medifraud?
EMS in America is a clusterfucked collage of profit-maximized ambulance megacorps, municipal programs orphaned by the fire departments(i have a whole post about defunding the fire departments this site isnt ready for), state-subsidised hospital operations, and sketchy operations run out of someone’s personal garage & kept afloat by wage theft & medicare billing fraud.
Most Non-Emergency Transports(NET), for stable patients who cant ambulate, or otherwise cant be transported by a personal vehicle or Taxi, are handled by the latter. Small, usually <12 ambulance companies that last long enough to collect a few lawsuits, declare bankrupcy, and then open the next day with a new logo stenciled on the trucks. Usually ran by the worst sort of small business tyrants & conmen
defunding the fire departments
Hey, someone else that agrees! In my area, firehall uses tax dollars to have giant political chud gatherings at elk lodges. From what I’m able to gather, it’s basically a meet n greet and lobbying party for local politicians complete with raffles.
Exactly. A combo of this chud good-ol-boy bullshit, yearly budget graft and the unfortunate fact most firefighters (especially chiefs) dont actually want anything to do with a medical calls. They wanna fight fires, not scoop people out of poop, or deal with junkies, or split up crews to have a rider do CPR. But you gotta justify your budget from needing to purchase 5 million dollar fire engines every few years & then burn the engine-hours out idling on the highway blocking traffic for fender benders. Turns out that’s not the tool for the job and a really asinine use of your hanger queens, but every MBA in city hall would have a fuckin fit if you had them sitting. EMS operations always and inevitably get cannibalized and privatized, despite the fact theres not that many fires anymore actually. We’ve gotten pretty damn good at fire prevention & supression. But you need this huge apparatus to fight fires when they do come out, and god forbid you have a fire crew just chilling around and waiting for a fire. They gotta moonlight EMS to keep up goodwill and have a disposable budget they can raid for good-ole boy bullshit & “fire prevention” jet-skis instead of just breaking it off into its own distinct service.
I’m rambling. TLDR; Fire & PD protects property primarily. EMS only protects human life, and human life only has value as an extractive industry in America. Budgets are assigned accordingly.
My dad worked 12 hour shifts at a power plant. But get this: one week, he’d do 3 shifts from 6am-6pm, have 4 days off, then the next week, he would get 4 shifts from 6pm-6am. He spent 5 years resetting his sleep cycle every week. He says he remembers next to nothing from those years.
This sounds like what I’m doing… I’m an SRE. I couldn’t remember if I had breakfast this morning or not and I’m in my 20s.
i’m not one but i know people who are and it seems across the world, ems first responders are criminally underfunded and ignored, it’s sadistic
fuck thats ridiculous as hell
i’m not in the US but ive been a patient to overworked doctors before and i can attest it sucks on our end as well. if i’m not wrong there’s also a problem with very evil individuals joining the medical field in the US not out of wanting to help people but for the money. which is horrible to both well tempered nurses/doctors and the patients.
I have a relative who is an ER doctor in Germany. Their work schedule is very similar to yours (except for that Wednesday-Thursday schedule, that’s 100% fucked up). They do tell me that they are working in a mismanaged hospital and that it isn’t the norm for other hospitals in their country. At least they get a minimum of 16 hours before the next shift, and they are on ER duty only for a few months, then they rotate to some other department until the next time they are assigned to ER duty. They also get 2 off days a week, and one is guaranteed to be in the weekend.
i typically dont know if i am working the next day but normally i am doing 12-16 hours a day 5-7 days per week
i guess it is just medicine everywhere that does this though
A tired, sick, stressed, underpaid worker is a compliant worker and citizen.
Wow that sounds like a nightmare
it isnt fun but somehow it is still better than my last job.
