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Yes. Family coverage for medical (gold level HSA plan - $6K annual family deductible), dental (Delta Dental), vision (Vision Support Program) at no cost to me.

Several PA classmates where athletic trainers who worked for ortho practices. In addition to the above, they often covered high school sporting events for the practice. Those practices either volunteered (as a way to get patients) or were hired to provide this coverage.

Not exactly experiences, but I set up a college 529 plan for my grandson.

I believe the learning curve for a new grad in EM is at least 3 years long. If the expectation is that you'll be hitting 2-2.5 PPH within 3 months of starting that will need to be almost exclusively 4's & 5's with very simple 3's. Once you have your flow down and are proficient with the EMR and your standard workups for the straightforward level 3's, then you can work on increasing your speed.

Multiple physician organizations, I believe about 30+, sent a letter in opposition to this. I don't believe it has actually gone into effect.

DMPAC: Or perhaps, in the proper environment, we could start having the discussion about how silly the idea of fire based EMS actually is. Yes, I know that separating them, no matter how justifiable it may be, would not solve the funding problem. At least not immediately. This is an ongoing debate. After 35+ years in fire & EMS, I've seen a few departments where it works poorly, a fair number where it works extremely well, and the rest where it works pretty much OK. I have a very strong preference for fire service based EMS. Fire departments almost always have better staffing and geographical distribution of stations to provide rapid response and good coverage vs EMS only agencies. Fire departments are also far better than EMS only agencies at providing plenty of personnel at the initial phases of responses where there are lots of things to get done at once and often many personnel needed to get the patient from where they are to the ambulance. Hospital based EMS agencies in my experience are far to vulnerable to hospital politics.

If I had lots of free time and money, I'd get a better degree Fahrenheit - year round.

Still a paramedic, do very little firefighting any more, do some EMS with my FD. Agree with everyone who's said that community paramedicine is a great idea but without a funding source. From what I've seen, the only well paid medics are dual role ff/medics. Medics who work for 3rd services and ones who work for private ambulance services don't do very well. For example, in my area, a paramedic classmate of mine makes over $100K/yr as a firefighter/medic but medics works for the privates who do the interfacility transports max out at $20-25/hour like Medic25 said. There are a few uniformed 3rd service EMS providers, but they still don't make what the dual role ff/medics do. Unless FD's are able to justify these efforts to reduce the load on their response volumes, or hospitals fund them to reduce frequent flyers, there's no way to pay for community paramedicine.

Another thing to think about is as you are developing your work-up, step 1 is immediate symptom management: anti-emetics fluids pain control respiratory interventions: nebs, steroids, O2, BiPap if needed chest pain: ASA, nitro (after IV access) tell the patient how you are going to help them feel less bad while you're figuring out what's going on - also tell them what your plan is for that: urine, blood, imaging, EKG, etc.

There are several factors: Often, the physicians, PA's, and NP's that work at a hospital are not hospital employees but rather employees of a physician group. Even if the providers in some areas, possibly hospitalists or anesthesia, are hospital employees, it's unlikely that you could be "promoted" from being a tech to a provider. It most likely would be an entirely separate hiring process. You will learn and change a lot during PA school. You could easily be exposed to an area of medicine or a practice location that's different from what you currently know and decide to pursue that. Given all of this, my recommendation is to not focus too much on going back to this facility. Build yourself a good reputation as reliable and hard worker who learns quickly. Let folks know you're going to PA school and may be interested in coming back. Try to get some but not all of your rotations at this facility. The impressions you make are what will help you get a job - at this facility or in some other setting.

Agreed - employer pays all credentialing fees - for the hospital. Not all employers pay for all the fees associated with the data gathering needed for credentialing: NCCPA verification, copies of transcripts/diplomas, immunization titres, verification of good standing from state medical boards, etc.

Diagnosed my 1st case of influenza A this year - haven't seen influenza B yet this year. (rural Indiana) Seems early to me. Was wondering what other folks have seen so far this year. If you have seen cases, was it A or B, and what geography.

In an urgent care or ED fast track setting ~3(patients + procedures)/hour is reasonable if the acuity is really level 4's. So, with 13 full beds, many patients will be waiting ~ 4 hours to be seen & discharged. If the acuity includes many level 3's, throughput is going to drop to 2-2.5/hour. It sounds like there are very unreasonable expectations of what throughput is reasonable.

If you can't find pigs feet, try suturing the skin on chicken legs and thighs. Chicken is at most grocery stores and approximates saggy elderly skin well.

Not a great Greg Henry fan, but I do believe in paying close attention to patient's actions when they are unaware of being watched. You can learn a lot about their neuro status, severity of their perceived pain, etc.