Do Firefighters Need Paramedic Training?
If you’ve considered a life as a firefighter, you might have imagined long shifts at the firehouse, dashing into burning buildings, saving kittens from trees, and educating the public about fire safety and prevention.
And you would have been correct in those imaginings of a day in the life of a firefighter, but there’s another piece of your future responsibilities you might not have thought to consider: emergency medical services.
Firefighters and Emergency Medical Services
Firefighters are often the first emergency responders to arrive on the scene of a trauma, accident, or disaster event. Depending on the structure of your city or community’s emergency response systems, firefighters may arrive without or well before trained emergency medical technicians (EMTs) and the ambulance rescue squad. But often, and varying based on the type of call being responded to, the people at the scene won’t be able to wait for additional medical help. Firefighters who can deliver even a minimal or basic amount of medical care in an emergency situation may very well save countless lives.
Firefighter Training at HCI
At Health Careers Institute, firefighter training begins with EMT-Basic certification. Nearly all fire departments will require firefighters, both volunteer and professional, to have these credentials to provide basic emergency care at a scene.
There is a difference between EMT-Basic (or EMT-B) credentials and paramedic credentials. To become a paramedic, one must obtain a higher level of emergency medical care training and education than basic EMTs, who are largely volunteers.
Obtaining a fuller education as a paramedic before or alongside your training and education to become a firefighter may turn out to be a great benefit to your career path. With paramedic training, you’ll receive hands-on experience that can only be of assistance when seeking your firefighter credentials. You may be better equipped to more quickly secure employment, move up the ranks, offer further training to your colleagues, and enjoy other professional benefits of paramedic credentials. In all, you’ll be able to do your job as a firefighter more fully and effectively with advanced medical services training.
