Weekend…

This weekend my wife and I flew to the “secret location” to check out a potential job for her. It looks pretty good. They want her and offered her a stupid amount of money. Now we just have to decide if we can live apart for the next 8 months while I finish medic school in the PNW. We’ve lived in a split household before, when I moved to Seattle, she stayed behind to sell the house. It was 6 months of racking up frequent flier miles. Not fun, but certainly not something that was a marriage ender. We both know it’s the means to an end.

While she was interviewing, I grabbed the keys to the rental car and cruised around. I was checking out potential places to live, looking at the city… all that fun stuff. While I was sitting at a red light, waiting to jump back on the freeway, I looked to my left and saw a Paramedic rig posted in a parking lot.

“Aha,” I said to myself, “I’ll go pick the brains of those guys in the truck.”

So I pulled in, introduced myself and spent the next 45 minutes discussing the pros and cons of their system, their protocols, pay, morale and everything else. Score!

First, it was a dual medic truck. That’s very nice. It was also a decent truck. It was clean and neat, Phillips monitor, standard load out for a medic truck. The medics were in crisp, neat uniforms. The condition of the rig and the guys in it says something about the company, don’t you think?

An additional plus, the medics were both really nice. Very forthcoming about the pros and shortcomings of working for *****. (Yeah, I’m not saying the name. Sorry.)The pay? Not too bad. The protocols? Not bad. They’re doing hypothermia for cardiac arrest but no RSI. “We’re mostly dropping King tubes,” the medic told me.

So, I asked about turnover. The senior guy on the truck had been there for 13 years and there wasn’t a lot of turnover. Sweet. How about quarters? They do System Status Management. Ohhh no. That sucks. I asked if he tought it would be difficult for me to get a job there. He looked me over and said, “If you know your shit, we always hire good medics. We like to hire older guys, too. There’s less cowboy in ‘em.” Then he grinned at me.  I shook his hand and said thanks and got on my way.

Hmm. Sounds promising.

It seems like an okay job. Morale is pretty good, there’s decent pay and the trucks are mostly dual medics. The downside, SSM and 12 hour shifts, no 24s. I guess you gotta take the good with the bad.

We’re flying home tomorrow and we’ll decide if we’re going to make the move or not within in the next day or two…