Age requirements to be a EMT-B

[Near]

I've been looking online on for EMT-B requirements specifically related to age, but I haven't been able to find any for my state (Florida).

I have a High School diploma, but the problem is I won't be turning 17 for another year.

Right now I'm not sure I would be able to get into an EMT program because of my age, but I haven't found anything that says contrary so far.

Anyone care to shed any insights? I appreciate it.

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[Dwindlin]

I've been looking online on for EMT-B requirements specifically related to age, but I haven't been able to find any for my state (Florida).

I have a High School diploma, but the problem is I won't be turning 17 for another year.

Right now I'm not sure I would be able to get into an EMT program because of my age, but I haven't found anything that says contrary so far.

Anyone care to shed any insights? I appreciate it.

18 to gain certification (though you may be able to take the class now). Though if you look in this forum there is a thread discussing the problem with becoming an EMT prior to being 21. Often times employers can't allow you to drive, which limits severely what you can do in terms of a job.

 

[MedicFL]

It really varies on state.. When I got my EMT in FL we didnt have nation Reg yet, I was 16 when I got my EMT-Basic, adn then through an early enrollment program I finished medic school at 17 and took my Medic exam one week before my 18th birthday.. I have heard of other states that allow you obtain certification before the age of 18. However getting a job will be tough.

 

[COMedic2Doc]

18 for most states now from my understanding, definitely in CO. 21 for becoming a Paramedic or EMT-Intermediate due to the advanced responsibilities involved.

 

[MedicFL]

18 for most states now from my understanding, definitely in CO. 21 for becoming a Paramedic or EMT-Intermediate due to the advanced responsibilities involved.

There is nothing in CO that says you cant be a certified paramedic at age 18. I know a person who came from CO and they were working as a Paramedic at age 20 out there..

 

[jbar]

even if you could become a medic at 18 I would recommend against it. From what I've seen and from just about everyone I've talked to you really should work as an EMT for a few years before getting your medic. It's a pretty big jump from nothing to medic.

 

[MedicFL]

even if you could become a medic at 18 I would recommend against it. From what I've seen and from just about everyone I've talked to you really should work as an EMT for a few years before getting your medic. It's a pretty big jump from nothing to medic.

I was a state certified medic at the age of 17. I agree the learning curve was huge....However you can do it if you want to it really depends on the person however. Doctors go from nothing to Doctor in four years, yes I know they have a residency. But medics go from nothing to medic in 2 years here in FL, and then usually have at least 2-3 months and in some systems up to 6 months of additional on the job training as a third man. SO should a DOC work as a nurse for a couple years first?

 

[Dwindlin]

I was a state certified medic at the age of 17. I agree the learning curve was huge....However you can do it if you want to it really depends on the person however.

Honestly the biggest problem I've seen with people having little/no experience as a EMT prior to going medic is they often completely forget to use thier BLS skills and often jump right to unnecessary ALS skills.

Example, one guy I went to medic school with for the first year as a medic he attempted a lot of unnecessary tubes simply because of his lack of experience and not understanding that his BLS skills would have worked faster and were more appropriate. Big one was the multiple postictal patients he tubed, that and tubing a few unresponsive diabetics before he thought to check blood sugars. Granted I've seen experienced medics do this as well, but the occurence I've seen is much higher in those that had little experience prior to gaining the ability to do those advanced skills.

 

[MedicFL]

I agree I had lots of naysayers through out my career, but 6 years later I fly as a flight medic, and teach classes to many of those same naysayers. I early enrolled at the community college and I was under the age of 18 so for me real world experience wasn't possible. My only experience was working as an EMT at a local water park because they would hire people under the age of 18. If I had to do it all over again, and I tell many of my students work at least 6 months to a year as an EMT and then enroll in a paramedic program.

 

[jbar]

I was a state certified medic at the age of 17. I agree the learning curve was huge....However you can do it if you want to it really depends on the person however. Doctors go from nothing to Doctor in four years, yes I know they have a residency. But medics go from nothing to medic in 2 years here in FL, and then usually have at least 2-3 months and in some systems up to 6 months of additional on the job training as a third man. SO should a DOC work as a nurse for a couple years first?

The big difference is that all the way through med school and residency you have the back up, in person, of more senior docs. If you can't get the tube as a third year EM resident (ie after 7 years of training) you have your attending there as well as anesthesia backup. Medics who are out in the field have a lot less backup when they are new. Yeah there is some field training at most places but the company is losing money paying three people to do two people's job so there is a lot of pressure to clear people.

The other thing is that before you order someone to do something, you should be able to do it well yourself. As a medic it isn't really your job to bag, or do chest compressions for example. During a code you should be dealing with the monitor, running the code, pushing drugs etc. I think it puts you at a real disadvantage running a code if you haven't worked one at the basic level. Same goes for a lot of other calls. Can medics take a blood pressure? Sure, but I would say that those who used to do it as their job (as a basic) are better at it. There is also the advantage to having had time to learn all those basic element of EMS like driving, dealing with the pram, interacting with the fire dept, radios etc. The medics who I saw coming out of school who had never worked EMS at any level struggled to learn all that stuff while also trying to hone their medicine.

 

[GregoryMD]

even if you could become a medic at 18 I would recommend against it. From what I've seen and from just about everyone I've talked to you really should work as an EMT for a few years before getting your medic. It's a pretty big jump from nothing to medic.

This. Both of my instructors mentioned that we should get at least a year or two on the field as basics before going to medic school. Mostly because what you learn in the classroom will not always be how its on the field. Hell, the most I learned from my EMT-B class was when one of our instructors (A paramedic firefighter) took us to the fire academy, put us in "engine groups", bought a bunch of fake blood, bruising, and trauma make-up/props and basically did mock calls. It was purely optional to attend, but it was such a great experience.

Seriously, droning through the steps of a trauma assessment via National Registry style and getting a kind of realistic simulator was completely different. The first group pretty much failed hard in treating their patient because they were so confused on how to delegate steps. We were all so used to going through steps by ourselves, that no one was comfortable with having one person go through airway and breathing, another getting a set of vitals, a third maintaining spinal immobilization, etc.

Granted, I haven't worked as a field EMT yet, but I plan to volunteer when I go down to Tucson in college this fall. I'm actually considering going through firefighter training and being a volunteer firefighter throughout college as well. But I can easily say that the fire academy thing our instructor put together for us was mind opening in terms of how treatment works.

 

[traumasurg]

I would agree with this last statement about the field experience. When I went through basic school we had a mock mci with medic students following us and if we screwed up they would tell us that the patient was going down hill and would eventually code them.

I realized that it is not as simple as going down a trauma checklist.

 

[GregoryMD]

I would agree with this last statement about the field experience. When I went through basic school we had a mock mci with medic students following us and if we screwed up they would tell us that the patient was going down hill and would eventually code them.

I realized that it is not as simple as going down a trauma checklist.

Reminds me of one of the mock patients/scenarios they gave one of the "crews". It was a fake shard of glass prop impaled in the patient's neck. She had multiple contusions, burns, and bleeds in random areas. Wasn't breathing as well. I remember everyone was scrambling on what to do about the shard of glass. They knew they shouldn't remove it, but airway is a critical criteria, and everyone was stressing out, it was kind of funny to watch. They ended up trying to wrap around it somehow, but our instructor just went, "You guys killed the patient. You lodged the glass deeper, it tore her carotid artery, and she bled out". They all started freaking out

But yeah, we all really got into it. One guy was to play the role of a diabetic patient presenting with hypoglycemia. He was *really* combative and even spit on one of the girls trying to treat him (The instructor told him to do that part, haha). It's bad enough with a group stressing out over how to handle the assessment in real-time rather than how we did it class. It's another dealing with that on top of a combative patient.

 

[traumasurg]

Reminds me of one of the mock patients/scenarios they gave one of the "crews". It was a fake shard of glass prop impaled in the patient's neck. She had multiple contusions, burns, and bleeds in random areas. Wasn't breathing as well. I remember everyone was scrambling on what to do about the shard of glass. They knew they shouldn't remove it, but airway is a critical criteria, and everyone was stressing out, it was kind of funny to watch. They ended up trying to wrap around it somehow, but our instructor just went, "You guys killed the patient. You lodged the glass deeper, it tore her carotid artery, and she bled out". They all started freaking out

But yeah, we all really got into it. One guy was to play the role of a diabetic patient presenting with hypoglycemia. He was *really* combative and even spit on one of the girls trying to treat him (The instructor told him to do that part, haha). It's bad enough with a group stressing out over how to handle the assessment in real-time rather than how we did it class. It's another dealing with that on top of a combative patient.

lol

Our mock MCI had like 20 patients and after the drill was over our instructor told us we didn't find one of the patients....

On another note,

we were taught how to "take down" a combative patient and when we did it one of the girls in our class hit her head against the "patients" knee really hard. we had to spinal package her for real and take her to the hospital

 

[GregoryMD]

lol

Our mock MCI had like 20 patients and after the drill was over our instructor told us we didn't find one of the patients....

On another note,

we were taught how to "take down" a combative patient and when we did it one of the girls in our class hit her head against the "patients" knee really hard. we had to spinal package her for real and take her to the hospital

Oh wow, so did you guys have to go through triage and such to decide which patients to treat in the mass casualty? Our mock was mostly just individual scenarios, but with a very vivid visual.

I remember the scenario I was given as the "patient". I was some guy from a party who ODed on heroine and got into a fight in a party. Our instructor gave me this capsule to put in my mouth and he said to bite down on it at some point during their treatment of me, because it would gush out a bunch of fake blood. When I bit down they all started screaming, "GET THE SUCTION!", and one girl started screaming because it looked so real.

But I guess another side of the mocks was the feeling of being the patient. I pretty much just laid there with my eyes closed, and all you can hear is just a group of people working together to try and treat the patient. It felt weird being holsted onto the longboard and such. Almost like an out-of-body experience. I could also hear myself think, "No, do <this and this>!" as they missed certain steps that I noticed from the patient perspective.

 

[Near]

Oh wow, so did you guys have to go through triage and such to decide which patients to treat in the mass casualty? Our mock was mostly just individual scenarios, but with a very vivid visual.

I remember the scenario I was given as the "patient". I was some guy from a party who ODed on heroine and got into a fight in a party. Our instructor gave me this capsule to put in my mouth and he said to bite down on it at some point during their treatment of me, because it would gush out a bunch of fake blood. When I bit down they all started screaming, "GET THE SUCTION!", and one girl started screaming because it looked so real.

But I guess another side of the mocks was the feeling of being the patient. I pretty much just laid there with my eyes closed, and all you can hear is just a group of people working together to try and treat the patient. It felt weird being holsted onto the longboard and such. Almost like an out-of-body experience. I could also hear myself think, "No, do <this and this>!" as they missed certain steps that I noticed from the patient perspective.

lol, that sounds fun! Even if you didn't want to really be an EMT

 

[traumasurg]

Oh wow, so did you guys have to go through triage and such to decide which patients to treat in the mass casualty? Our mock was mostly just individual scenarios, but with a very vivid visual.

I remember the scenario I was given as the "patient". I was some guy from a party who ODed on heroine and got into a fight in a party. Our instructor gave me this capsule to put in my mouth and he said to bite down on it at some point during their treatment of me, because it would gush out a bunch of fake blood. When I bit down they all started screaming, "GET THE SUCTION!", and one girl started screaming because it looked so real.

But I guess another side of the mocks was the feeling of being the patient. I pretty much just laid there with my eyes closed, and all you can hear is just a group of people working together to try and treat the patient. It felt weird being holsted onto the longboard and such. Almost like an out-of-body experience. I could also hear myself think, "No, do <this and this>!" as they missed certain steps that I noticed from the patient perspective.

Yea we had the triage tags and everything.

You learn little things you don't even think about while in a "panic" situation. Like my group got docked points because we carried our patient on the backboard down the stairs head first which apparently was bad.

We had all the making and it looked very real. We had 3 local ambulances come and we would take our patient for a drive around the facility and place a call to our teacher who was the "hospital" and we would give a patient report.

However, I recall one of the other groups brought a patient to the triage area and left him with no one in charge so the medic student shouts...

"This guy is in cardiac arrest.... here is a paramedic so run a code.."

Yea the whole nine yards fake chest compressions, fake breathing, fake drugs, real iv because the medic was practicing but it was pretty fun.

 

[traumasurg]

Oh wow, so did you guys have to go through triage and such to decide which patients to treat in the mass casualty? Our mock was mostly just individual scenarios, but with a very vivid visual.

I remember the scenario I was given as the "patient". I was some guy from a party who ODed on heroine and got into a fight in a party. Our instructor gave me this capsule to put in my mouth and he said to bite down on it at some point during their treatment of me, because it would gush out a bunch of fake blood. When I bit down they all started screaming, "GET THE SUCTION!", and one girl started screaming because it looked so real.

But I guess another side of the mocks was the feeling of being the patient. I pretty much just laid there with my eyes closed, and all you can hear is just a group of people working together to try and treat the patient. It felt weird being holsted onto the longboard and such. Almost like an out-of-body experience. I could also hear myself think, "No, do <this and this>!" as they missed certain steps that I noticed from the patient perspective.

Sorry forgot to tell the scenario.

I live in Alabama and my instructor is a big Alabama football fan so the scenario was all these students were in a building when an Auburn fan drove into the building shouting "I'm gonna kill em all."

It was pretty funny.

 

[meliora27]

Honestly the biggest problem I've seen with people having little/no experience as a EMT prior to going medic is they often completely forget to use thier BLS skills and often jump right to unnecessary ALS skills.

Don't underestimate the BLS skill set. I worked as a B on a private for a while before coming off the street to work as an ED tech. I can't tell you how many radio reports I hear when I'm working in the ED from municipal fire departments en route to the hospital (these folks are all FF/Medics, some are even Critical Care Paramedics) who tell us over the radio that they're running the call BLS as opposed to ALS. Medics still use their BLS skills all the time. Good point!