Nick’s Hypertext Essay #2 Proposal - Emergency Medicine

Next time you have an emergency, be it from alcohol poisoning, stroke, a car-wreck, or maybe even something more serious, stop for a minute and contemplate the fact that the EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) or Paramedic serving you could easily be making less than the living-wage. Although many do manage to make ends meet in the emergency medical care professions, and unions are becoming more prominent, the truth is many of the people you might admire for devoting their lives to helping others are barely helping themselves at home.

Although long hours are deemed an ordinary part of the EMT or Paramedic’s job description, I think the extent to which some of these underpaid workers clock-in is dangerous both to themselves and to patients. It is difficult enough to make a potentially life-altering decision for a patient, now imagine doing it at the end of a 48 hour shift in an attempt to clock-in some overtime to pay the bills.

I think the best connection between the emergency medical field and our class reading has been Shipler’s analysis of the hidden fees. EMTs and Paramedics not only deal with confusing tax procedures, leases, and interest rates, but are in fact subject to horrendous hidden governmental fees for obtaining and maintaining their certificates to work in the medical field. If not making credit card payments and filing for bankruptcy seems bad, imagine not being able to afford your recertification fee; you would lose your job and potential to work with no ability to recover without starting over from square-one, a several-thousand dollar prospect.

Furthermore the emotional stress of these jobs are not taken into consideration; while it is certainly gross to work in a meatpacking plant full of dead cattle and bovine blood, imagine what it would be like to spend every day dealing with real people suffering. It is an emotional baggage that few can leave completely at the door.

For all these reasons, I believe it is time the emergency medical community had someone stand up and point out that struggling in America is not limited to jobs that lack prestige, even someone that people look up to and admire for their goodwill can be caught in the underclass current.