Career Paths in English Speaking Countries
EMDs come to their jobs from a variety of backgrounds. These might involve no prior experience at all, but are more likely to involve some other previous form of dispatching experience (taxis and tow trucks are common). In some cases, prior dispatch experience might involve one of the other emergency services. In some cases, although not a great many, trained paramedics may become EMDs. This may happen as the result of a work-related injury resulting in disability, or it may simply be that a paramedic completes training and then finds that field work is not to their taste, or that they lack the ability to perform the physical aspects of being a paramedic (e.g. heavy lifting) without fear of injury. There is some debate, particularly between paramedics and EMDs, as to whether prior training as a paramedic actually constitutes an advantage or an unnecessary distraction from the EMD job function. Valid perspectives exist on both sides of the debate.
In large EMS systems, EMDs may follow a progressive career path. Actual dispatching may lead to training positions, and from there to supervisory or even managerial positions within the dispatch centre. EMDs may move from smaller systems to larger systems, just as paramedics sometimes do, in search of advancement opportunities, or economic improvements. In some cases, EMDs may choose to retrain and move to fire dispatch (EFD), to police dispatch (EPD), or to the 9-1-1 call centre. The inequities in the sheer amount of training required for certification make advancement of EMDs to paramedic status an extremely infrequent event. The required additional training, depending on the jurisdiction, might take two years or more, part-time, in addition to regular full-time employment, putting this option beyond the reach of all but the most determined. Typically, EMDs who are also certified paramedics tend to have been paramedics first.
Read more about this topic: Emergency Medical Dispatcher
Famous quotes containing the words career, paths, english, speaking and/or countries:
““Never hug and kiss your children! Mother love may make your children’s infancy unhappy and prevent them from pursuing a career or getting married!” That’s total hogwash, of course. But it shows on extreme example of what state-of-the-art “scientific” parenting was supposed to be in early twentieth-century America. After all, that was the heyday of efficiency experts, time-and-motion studies, and the like.”
—Lawrence Kutner (20th century)
“She had no longer any relish for her once favorite amusement of reading. And mostly she disliked those authors who have penetrated deeply into the intricate paths of vanity in the human mind, for in them her own folly was continually brought to her remembrance and presented to her view.”
—Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)
“Six hours for a man, seven for a woman, and eight for a fool.”
—18th-century English proverb.
“For more than forty years I’ve been speaking in prose without even knowing it!”
—Molière [Jean Baptiste Poquelin] (1622–1673)
“I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being.”
—Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826)