How I Came to Choose EMS and Nursing as Careers

Eric M. Simpson

Mrs. Sharon Aiken

English Composition 1101-06

February 15, 2011

How I Came to Choose EMS and Nursing as Careers

            EMS stands for Emergency Medical Services. I like to think that EMS stands for me, too. I was born “EMS”; they are my initials. As a child, I never envisioned that I would become a paramedic. During my formative years I was never associated with any rescue or ambulance service. How I came to choose EMS as a career is sort of a mystery. Herein, I attempt to decipher clues from a past which led me into EMS, and try to delineate my current diversion towards nursing. Perhaps a review of my livelihoods will provide insight. Knowing where I have been, and some of what I have done, may define why I am now trying to evolve from EMS into nursing.

            While in school, I had part-time summer jobs. I worked as a laborer for a lumber mill and for a winery. As a Crawford County High School class of 1977 graduate, little time passed before I attended college. I got a part-time job at a pizza restaurant and enrolled at Gordon College. I did not fare well in my youthful college venture. After experiencing disappointment with some aspects of college, namely poor grades, I quit. I went back home to the family’s logging business. Within two years of carrying a chainsaw working around and over piles of unsteady logs, I felt like I needed a bailout. That bailout came in the form of an enlistment in the military.

Thirty-two years ago, with twenty-six hours credited on my college transcript, I enlisted in the United States Air Force as a Medical Service Specialist. I doubt that a job description which included such details as handling urinals and bedpans, giving bed baths or feeding invalid patients is what lured me in. Something else must have pressured me towards the career as a medic. Quiet possibly, I was escaping from a job which I had come to mostly dread. Maybe I needed to grow up, move out, and get away from my immediate family. Perhaps my logging job had become too risky. Or so I thought.

I was oblivious as to what I was getting into. The inherent risks of providing medical care were totally unforeseen. Thoughts of biohazards, needle-sticks, contagious diseases, personal attachments, long hours, odd shifts, strange partnerships, irate family members, and psychotic patients were never conceived within my nineteen year-old brain. I had thought chainsaws were dangerous! Did I mention that after enlisting I really began to miss the smell of pine forests, diesel logging tractors and dirt roads?

        Getting into EMS was actually an effort to get away from smells. I was serving at the Air Force’s largest medical facility on a busy medical ward. That was nothing to be ashamed of, but I was handling bedpans in their most unappealing moments when an opportunity became available to advance my career.  An Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) class sounded like my ticket to the emergency room and an ambulance. At that time, I had learned about as much as I wanted to know about bedpans. I do not think that I had yet recognized any association between my initials and EMS. I just wanted to get away from the bedpans!  

EMS is truly a big part of me, even bigger than just being my initials. EMS has been a way of living for most of my life. I have been a paramedic for almost twenty-eight years. I have taught EMTs, paramedics, nurses and doctors in a variety of advanced life support classes. I have served my local community as a first-responder to local EMS and fire department calls, been a member of my county’s ambulance service, dive team, search-and-rescue and vehicle-extrication teams.  I maintained my professional certification as a paramedic working on the ambulance for over twenty-six years. Over thirty-one years of my life has been devoted to medical care. I have contributed towards countless lives saved.  Although I have smelled the burnt flesh of children and adults, delivered babies, provided emergency care to my own family members, handled mangled bodies, seen countless dead bodies and dieing people, freed victims from tangled wreckages, seen maggots growing on conscious and alert live patients, and directed resuscitations for several years, I have not, as some would say, “seen and done it all”. I have, however, done enough to physically wear me down. Although I am still quiet capable of performing the duties and responsibilities required of a paramedic, I am nearing exhaustion in that capacity.

       The years in the field have taken their toll on my body. I continue to ponder how, but not why, I chose to become a paramedic. Maybe not as mysterious as I had perceived it to be, my transformation from a laborer to a paramedic seems to have been an evolution created out of desperation and desires. Now my professional goal in EMS is redirected. I am hoping to get into something that is less physically demanding. With Anatomy and Physiology One and Two classes behind me, I am progressing, and possibly evolving towards becoming a registered nurse (RN). I may soon perform emergency medical services from an emergency room perspective. With a degree of self-discipline and success, I will also retain my paramedic certification as a safety net. For someday, “EMS” may feel a need to bailout again.