Free Sample
The Complete Guide to Becoming An Emergency Medical Technician
The real numbers, daily realities, and honest self-assessment you need to decide if this career is right for you
by Alumigogo Books
Chapter 1: What Does a Emergency Medical Technician Actually Do?
What Does an Emergency Medical Technician Actually Do?
Let's start by clearing away the television version of this job. The TV show opens with a siren at midnight, a dramatic rescue, and a one-liner before the credits roll. The real job of an EMT is both less glamorous and more substantial than that. It's a job built on repetition, protocol, and split-second decisions that often don't feel dramatic at all.
An Emergency Medical Technician is called into service whenever someone is sick or injured enough that they can't get themselves to the hospital. That's the core of it. If someone breaks a leg on a hike, calls 911 for chest pain, or is thrown from a motorcycle on the highway, an EMT is dispatched to the scene. Your job is to assess the situation, stabilize the patient as best you can with what you carry on the ambulance, and transport them to a facility equipped to handle their problem.
The word "stabilize" is doing a lot of work there. In practice, it means a set of highly specific skills that you'll perform on a daily basis. You will take vital signs - blood pressure, pulse, breathing rate - and you'll do it more times in one shift than most people do in a year. You will apply bandages to bleeding wounds, splint broken bones, and assist with breathing using a bag-valve mask (a hand-operated device that forces air into a