Part 1: Research
Guiding Question: Is there an injustice towards EMTs?
Research Questions:
https://med.stanford.edu/emt/what-is-an-emt.html
http://money.com/money/5424851/the-pay-is-just-not-enough-emts-are-working-multiple-jobs-just-to-make-ends-meet/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470509/
Part 2:
Cover Letter
We live in an accident-prone world. A world full of crime, injury, and accidental death a system of response is direly needed. You are walking down the street, on your way to work and then you suddenly witness a car crash head-on into a tree. You call 911 and tell them what happened, and within 5 minutes an ambulance sirens roaring comes to a hauling stop on your location. Two EMTs in uniform hop out and immediately extract the victim from the car and provide immediate care on the scene. Once stabilized they hop in the back of the ambulance turn those sirens back on, and speed to the hospital as fast as they can. Would you consider this a difficult job? How about stressful and tiring? To answer the question for you, yes this job is unbelievably difficult, tiring and very stressful. It is a 24-hour service that is always provided no matter the circumstances.
Think about working a simple, not too difficult job in the United States, and making minimum wage for that work. It is a simple job, so it makes sense right? Now imagine the work of an EMT, and imagine they only get paid $14 an hour, and the minimum wage is around $12 an hour. The rough thing about this is that this is not imagination, it is a reality. The first step to determining why the pay is so low is figuring out where the money is coming from. First responder systems like Law Enforcement, Fire Departments, and EMT are all funded through government funds. The problem is that Fire and Police are looked in higher favor compared to EMT. Because of this EMT will not receive near as much funding as the other two. Because of this massive lack of funding, Communities themselves will have to fund their own EMS systems on their own in many cases. The other sources for funding can involve private funding and other third parties. I gathered this information from Wikipedia on the Emergency medical services page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_medical_services_in_the_United_States.
This can fall into a philosophical view of Utilitarianism. The reason for this is because EMS is created for a greater good for all the people that fall into their districts. This is why I believe there is an injustice with compensation and funding for EMS systems. The country continues to grow with more and more medical issues, and with that Medical Emergencies. So, for the greater good we need to provide emergency medical service to everyone, and in good quality. When there is a lack of funding then the quality of the care will not be perfect. Emergency medical care and transport were created in the early 1960s because of heart disease, diabetes, and many other medical problems arising in the country. Without EMTs, the amount of medical-related deaths would increase dramatically. This information provided to me from the National Center for Biotechnology Information under United States medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470509/.
Now I would like to speak in a personal experience matter. Currently, I am enrolled in an EMT basic education school. This is a 22-week class that covers many medical topics, and emergencies. This includes Cardiovascular Emergencies, Respiratory Emergencies, Anatomy of the entire body, Neurological systems, BLS(Basic Life Support), and a whole lot more. The amount of information that is needed to become an EMT is massive and can be very stressful. You are the first person to respond to a medical emergency outside of the hospital and the last person to be with them until they arrive at the hospital. This role can be determined into a life or death scenario. If you do not respond quickly enough or do not provide the right type of treatment, death is very much possible. The job requires critical thinking and an extensive memory of large amounts of medical information.
Part 3:
My Justice project is Emergency Medical Response compensation and payment as a whole for the position. My approach to solving this is to look into the shortage of EMTs across the nation as well as paramedics. Because of the low income, and lack of government care for EMS departments, there is a critically low amount of paramedics and EMTs in the country. The big contributing factor to low employment is indeed low payment for the work that is done. The reason for the low pay in this field is the lack of education. EMTs and Paramedics do not require a college degree, therefore they are seen with less value in our society. However, the need for their contribution is dire due to our rising problems in health complications. I gathered further research from this source.
https://www.jems.com/2019/09/24/the-paramedic-shortage-opportunity-or-crisis/
This was an article in the Journal of Emergency Medical Services. The approach that I have chosen is to add contributing factors to an EMT to acquire more purpose to receive a better wage. Examples of this would be analyzing whether or not a college education is necessary and determining how much training they need to receive. If college education was added to the requirements of being an EMT then the worth would also increase for EMS workers. The main contributing factors are educational systems, and tax funding for EMS systems across the United States. If this approach was taken I believe the crisis would begin to transform into the positive side.
Part 4:
Proposal
The proposal that I would be making to benefit, and encourage a change in EMT compensation would be increasing the education availability for the line of work itself. This can be offering a college degree and or more extensive training on the line of work as well. This would change compensation because of the worth that would be added to the position because of the college educational background. The whole proposal is increasing the worth to the government's eyes, so more funding is added.
Another possible proposal that I believe would change the compensation would be increasing taxes and or diverting more funding to EMS activity because of the rising need for EMT work across the nation. This is a less likely outcome because of the proper reasoning given to the public for good reason in rising taxes. However when taxes have risen for this reason there is better care that will be provided to the sick and injured that are under the care of EMTs. This proposal is aimed at the public in most for raising taxes and , and it is also projected to educational systems for adding more opportunities for EMS related college education so that the worth will increase for EMTs. The decision is a higher power decision being the government at most.
My contribution to this proposal would be to show what it is like in communities when EMS systems are removed from the picture, and there is no medical ambulance systems. I want to see how this affects the community as a whole, and the death and illness ratios in these communities.
Part 5
Reflection:
Guiding Question: Is there an injustice towards EMTs?
Research Questions:
- What is an EMT
- Why do EMT’s get paid what they currently do?
- Why were EMT’s created?
- What is an EMT?
https://med.stanford.edu/emt/what-is-an-emt.html
- Why do EMT’s get paid what they currently do?
http://money.com/money/5424851/the-pay-is-just-not-enough-emts-are-working-multiple-jobs-just-to-make-ends-meet/
- Why were EMTs created?
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470509/
Part 2:
Cover Letter
We live in an accident-prone world. A world full of crime, injury, and accidental death a system of response is direly needed. You are walking down the street, on your way to work and then you suddenly witness a car crash head-on into a tree. You call 911 and tell them what happened, and within 5 minutes an ambulance sirens roaring comes to a hauling stop on your location. Two EMTs in uniform hop out and immediately extract the victim from the car and provide immediate care on the scene. Once stabilized they hop in the back of the ambulance turn those sirens back on, and speed to the hospital as fast as they can. Would you consider this a difficult job? How about stressful and tiring? To answer the question for you, yes this job is unbelievably difficult, tiring and very stressful. It is a 24-hour service that is always provided no matter the circumstances.
Think about working a simple, not too difficult job in the United States, and making minimum wage for that work. It is a simple job, so it makes sense right? Now imagine the work of an EMT, and imagine they only get paid $14 an hour, and the minimum wage is around $12 an hour. The rough thing about this is that this is not imagination, it is a reality. The first step to determining why the pay is so low is figuring out where the money is coming from. First responder systems like Law Enforcement, Fire Departments, and EMT are all funded through government funds. The problem is that Fire and Police are looked in higher favor compared to EMT. Because of this EMT will not receive near as much funding as the other two. Because of this massive lack of funding, Communities themselves will have to fund their own EMS systems on their own in many cases. The other sources for funding can involve private funding and other third parties. I gathered this information from Wikipedia on the Emergency medical services page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_medical_services_in_the_United_States.
This can fall into a philosophical view of Utilitarianism. The reason for this is because EMS is created for a greater good for all the people that fall into their districts. This is why I believe there is an injustice with compensation and funding for EMS systems. The country continues to grow with more and more medical issues, and with that Medical Emergencies. So, for the greater good we need to provide emergency medical service to everyone, and in good quality. When there is a lack of funding then the quality of the care will not be perfect. Emergency medical care and transport were created in the early 1960s because of heart disease, diabetes, and many other medical problems arising in the country. Without EMTs, the amount of medical-related deaths would increase dramatically. This information provided to me from the National Center for Biotechnology Information under United States medicine. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1470509/.
Now I would like to speak in a personal experience matter. Currently, I am enrolled in an EMT basic education school. This is a 22-week class that covers many medical topics, and emergencies. This includes Cardiovascular Emergencies, Respiratory Emergencies, Anatomy of the entire body, Neurological systems, BLS(Basic Life Support), and a whole lot more. The amount of information that is needed to become an EMT is massive and can be very stressful. You are the first person to respond to a medical emergency outside of the hospital and the last person to be with them until they arrive at the hospital. This role can be determined into a life or death scenario. If you do not respond quickly enough or do not provide the right type of treatment, death is very much possible. The job requires critical thinking and an extensive memory of large amounts of medical information.
Part 3:
My Justice project is Emergency Medical Response compensation and payment as a whole for the position. My approach to solving this is to look into the shortage of EMTs across the nation as well as paramedics. Because of the low income, and lack of government care for EMS departments, there is a critically low amount of paramedics and EMTs in the country. The big contributing factor to low employment is indeed low payment for the work that is done. The reason for the low pay in this field is the lack of education. EMTs and Paramedics do not require a college degree, therefore they are seen with less value in our society. However, the need for their contribution is dire due to our rising problems in health complications. I gathered further research from this source.
https://www.jems.com/2019/09/24/the-paramedic-shortage-opportunity-or-crisis/
This was an article in the Journal of Emergency Medical Services. The approach that I have chosen is to add contributing factors to an EMT to acquire more purpose to receive a better wage. Examples of this would be analyzing whether or not a college education is necessary and determining how much training they need to receive. If college education was added to the requirements of being an EMT then the worth would also increase for EMS workers. The main contributing factors are educational systems, and tax funding for EMS systems across the United States. If this approach was taken I believe the crisis would begin to transform into the positive side.
Part 4:
Proposal
The proposal that I would be making to benefit, and encourage a change in EMT compensation would be increasing the education availability for the line of work itself. This can be offering a college degree and or more extensive training on the line of work as well. This would change compensation because of the worth that would be added to the position because of the college educational background. The whole proposal is increasing the worth to the government's eyes, so more funding is added.
Another possible proposal that I believe would change the compensation would be increasing taxes and or diverting more funding to EMS activity because of the rising need for EMT work across the nation. This is a less likely outcome because of the proper reasoning given to the public for good reason in rising taxes. However when taxes have risen for this reason there is better care that will be provided to the sick and injured that are under the care of EMTs. This proposal is aimed at the public in most for raising taxes and , and it is also projected to educational systems for adding more opportunities for EMS related college education so that the worth will increase for EMTs. The decision is a higher power decision being the government at most.
My contribution to this proposal would be to show what it is like in communities when EMS systems are removed from the picture, and there is no medical ambulance systems. I want to see how this affects the community as a whole, and the death and illness ratios in these communities.
Part 5
Reflection:
- When I first began this project, I wanted to find something that connected to my senior project, the reason for this is because I could see so many injustices in the line of what I chose for my Senior project. Since I did this I found a massive amount of interest in the subject. Because I had such great interest in it, it promoted a large amount of inspiration to focus on the work.
- My proposal aligns with my own strengths, and my Senior project ideal action project because I want to bring knowledge to the public about what is going on because when it comes down to it the public and those in a higher power are the only ones that can do anything about it.
- I learned about the worth of an EMT. This will help tremendously in my senior project because of my project as a whole is about finding the worth of an EMT. So the knowledge that I gained is going to be very much used in my project later on.
- The most valuable information that I gathered while working on this project was teaching myself what it will take to increase the worth of an EMT in the governments, and public eyes. Examples of this are increasing education for the EMS field. Before this, I never thought about this. This was very valuable to me.
- I believe that there was nothing that Ashley could do to improve this project, There was well enough work time to complete the assignments and tasks. On my part, I believe that there was nothing really that I think I would look back on and improve. The reasoning for this is because of how engaged I was with the topic I was studying and working on.