Pros
-Great opportunity to gain EMS experience -No micromanagement -Great Field Training Officers -Good support from supervisors/HR The pros for this company is that it is a great company to cut your teeth on EMS experience. As a practitioner in facility transport, you will learn how to interact with patients as real people as well interact with various levels of hospital staff from ER techs all the way to charge nurses and in some cases doctors. You will have the opportunity to become proficient at documentation as well as putting some of your skills to practice. The FTOs at the San Diego location are fantastic at helping you break the ice with this. Other Pros about this company (at least at the San Diego location) is that management is relatively hands off. You must be a self-starter to be successful though. The San Diego location is located within a minuet of it's contract hospital, where you will run most of your transports out of that location. That mean's no sitting in Starbucks parking lots for 8 hours waiting for calls. When you are not on a call you are back at station and you are on your own time. It is the perfect scenario if you are studying for other classes that you might be enrolled in or simply trying to stay on top of your knowledge (which is highly advised since you will not regularly use most of your skills that you learned in EMT school as you will not be running 911 calls outside of the rare situation where you patient deteriorates en route to another location or you are working an event.)
Cons
-Low pay -Unrealistic expectations This is more of an indicator of the EMS climate in general and not of this company specifically. EMT-B's are usually short timers. This job is stepping stone job for people trying to get into the ER, a specific school, fire academy, etc. Our education compared to Paramedics or CCT nurses is much less significant. So the pay unfortunately fits the scenario. Don't expect this job to be a gold mine and I don't advise trying to stay as an EMT-B in facility transport for more than a year. Move on to 911 or move on to the next level of your ambitions in the medical field. As far as unrealistic expectations go, manage your own expectations. There are days where you are going to be out running calls for 16+ hours. Some days you're going to miss getting paid for your full 24 hours by a matter of 10 minuets. Some calls are going to take you over an hour (one way) out of your normal area of operation. You're going to get exhausted. Covid calls can get tedious. Some of the calls are going to be petty. Patients are going to be uncooperative and verbally abusive. Hospital staff, medics and fire look down on facility transporters. People in this field are jaded and cynical, they are not going to be the easiest people to deal with. They're going to be uncooperative as well. They are going to ignore you. They are going to be rude to you. Be prepared to have to be assertive and vocal at times. Manage your expectations.