By Tatiana Prophet
Daily Press - Victorville (California)
Copyright 2007 Daily Press
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
VICTORVILLE, Calif. — When it comes to advanced cardiac life support, a paramedic must undergo the same licensing requirements as an emergency room doctor.
And until the ambulance arrives at the hospital, a patient’s life is in the paramedic’s hands.
Yet an emergency room doctor in the Victor Valley makes about five times as much as a paramedic.
The starting salary of a local paramedic working for American Medical Response is $38,535 a year, or between $12 and $13 an hour when calculated across 24-hour shifts. According to Monster.com, the median income of an ER doctor in the Victor Valley is $233,000 a year.
Local ambulance workers just negotiated a new contract with AMR, which is by far the largest publicly-traded ambulance company in the United States. Through their union, the International Association of EMTs and Paramedics, employees agreed on the latest salaries after prolonged talks that went well over the deadline of February of last year.
The final raise was 15 3 /4 percent over three years, far less than the 21 percent negotiated in the last contract. And it was hard-won. The union briefly considered a strike during negotiations, which would not have interrupted their emergency work -- just the lucrative extra income the company makes from interhospital transfers and event stand-bys.
In the end the raise was not bad, said Donnie Self, president of the union.
But he added that salary is just a small part of what ambulance workers deal with on a daily basis that makes their jobs tougher than most.
In the Victor Valley a fixed number of ambulance crews are having to meet a growing number of emergency calls, which numbered 800 for all of 1989 and reached 8,017 in 2005.
Some of the ambulances have been reassigned from 24-hour shifts, where they sleep in a station like firefighters, to 12-hour shifts where the emergency crew no longer has a couch or a place to sleep. Instead, they park between towns, waiting to be called to either one.
“They have to be awake and in an ambulance, splitting the difference between two cities because the resources have been depleted,” Self said. “It’s like having a classroom and the teacher says, ‘OK, you start studying this subject and I have to go check on a math test.’ ”
And bed delays cause paramedics and emergency medical technicians to sometimes wait for hours with their patients on gurneys until there is a bed available.
“I’ve waited as long as five hours with a patient on my gurney to be seen,” said paramedic Kenneth Churning, the union steward.
According to a presentation given by the Victorville Firefighter’s Association, the bed delay in the Victor Valley reached 80 hours a week in 2006.
Chur ning acknowledged that the latest salary contract is not a bad increase. But in his mind, EMTs and paramedics deserve to make much more.
“This is the same person that’s going into your house, if you’re dying, to work on you,” he said. “I’m very dependent on my EMT to be my ears and my eyes.”
A starting EMT in Victorville now makes $31,767 a year, or $10.70 an hour. An EMT does not provide the advanced level of care that a paramedic does, but assists the paramedic closely.
Attempts to reach American Medical Response were unsuccessful. But a perusal of the company’s profile suggests that it is headed for some downsizing.
In February AMR laid off 51 employees at its Northeast regional headquarters in New Haven, Conn., and 25 drivers in Waterbury, Conn.
With $1.93 billion in revenue in 2005, the company is head and shoulders above its closest competitor, Rural/Metro Corp., which had $459.95 million in revenue in 2005.
Churning said the life of an emergency responder is not for everyone.
“Not everybody can do this job,” he said. “It’s the sleeping schedule. There’s a lot of divorce, and health problems just from not being able to eat right.”
Many seasoned paramedics work second jobs just to make ends meet. For them, it’s easier to change professions than to fight for a better way of life. As a result, turnover is high and ambulance companies continue to get new recruits who don’t require much in the way of salary.
“As long as the public perceives our job as this great exciting thing, there will always be brand new kids lining up and down the block willing to work for free,” he said.