Effect essay

I have been a paramedic for fifteen years. I received my training at the now defunked Maine EMS Academy at Kennebec Valley Technical College, graduating in 1995. The program ran for twenty years and was touted as the best paramedic school in the northeast. It was the only full-time paramedic training in Maine but unfortunately was shut down in 2005 due to lack of funding. This program was a fantastic program to attend and has turned out some of the best paramedics in the state. Some of the reasons why it was such a good program were that it was highly selective in who it accepted, very high academic standard and an extremely passionate and knowledgeable instructor.

I had been a Basic EMT for several years and had come to the realization that if I wanted to be a career firefighter I needed to be a paramedic. I knew the program was very selective and after the initial application process, applicants had to have an agonizing interview with the instructor and a seasoned paramedic. I had been told that students were selected for several reasons but usually you did not see more than one student from any one geographical area. Students were taken from all over Maine and the Maritimes because Canada's nearest paramedic school was in Montreal. The first day of class the instructor let it be known that there were twenty or thirty people on the waiting list. He said in no uncertain terms that if any one of us was not committed 100% to the class, that now was the time to get out so others may take our spot. Everyone was hand picked by the instructor for various political or geographical reasons. Some were accepted into the program simply because they came from an area where there were a lot of paramedics from another program and our instructor wanted his class to have a presence in that area. At the time I was living in Thomaston, was in my early 20's, and this was good because I really didn't have much going on and there were not many paramedics in the area let alone from this program.

The instructor told us, on the first day, that he had a much higher standard than any other similar program out there. He wasn't kidding. The class consisted full days of classroom lecture on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and clinical rotations Tuesdays, and Thursdays, for the first semester. Second and third semesters were clinical rotations on Mon.,Wed., Fri., and classroom on Tues., and Thurs. At the end of the ten months of class we were to do an internship for two weeks, one in Hartford, Connecticut and the other in Rochester, New York. It was a very time consuming class and required lots of travel for clinical rotations. Clinicals were in Portland, Bangor, Lewiston, Waterville, and Augusta, which combined with travel time and studying made for very short nights. This was only part of what made this program harder than most others. The standard minimum passing grade for most public safety classes is 70%, in this program it was 80%. We had fifty question quizzes every week and the average exam was two hundred and fifty questions and took about four hours to complete. The national requirements for a paramedic class is one thousand hours, five hundred clinical and five hundred didactic. This program was over twenty five hundred hours.

Now the instructor, he came into the room on the first day and said “My name is Paul Plummer and I have bachelors degrees in Philosophy and Theology and I currently working on a bachelors in Microbiology, and this will be the hardest class you have ever had.” Paul was from Mass. and had been a Basic EMT in Boston for a couple of years in the late 1970's before going to paramedic school. He had worked as a paramedic in New York City for six or seven years in the eighties. Now that is the big time, the majors of the EMS world. At the time violent crime was on the rise in NYC , heroin still in full swing and crack was starting to grab hold. Just by saying he worked in New York at that time I knew he had been there, done that, and had the t-shirt. He is a very intense man and was passionate about making sure that he turned out good paramedics. He had seen over his time the damage a poorly trained and educated paramedic could do. There were no half measures with Paul, you either knew the answer to a question or you didn't, and that was it.   He had memorized his lesson plan and often would not look at for house because he knew the information cold. You knew where you stood with Paul and he was the kind of guy that would not sugar coat things at all. If you screwed up, you knew it immediatly, and there was no question what you did wrong. But if someone else screwed up and tried to blame one of his students, he would fight to the death to make sure his students looked good.

That was fifteen years ago, and the program no longer exists. That's to bad because it did turn out some great paramedics, many of which I work with today. At the end of the class, when we did out internship in Rochester, the ambulance company we were riding with tried to recruit all of us and offered double signing bonuses because as they said, we were on a different level than any paramedics graduating in upstate New York. That says a lot about the caliber of paramedics that came out of that class. It was the hardest class I have ever taken and I am very glad I made it through. I feel that I am fortunate to have been through that program because I think it made a better paramedic that the other programs offered then and now. Because I got into one of the most selective programs around, being made to meet a higher standard, and a great instructor, I know that I have received the best training possible in my field.

Division essay

This essay will be very relevant to my life in the recent past. I will discuss what it takes to be a good Fire Officer. This is relevant because for the past two weeks I have been feverishly studying for the Lieutenants exam for the Bangor Fire department where I work. The test was last Thursday and my life has been filled with anxiety and turmoil in preparation and anticipation of this test. In reality, I have been seriously preparing for this test for the last three years and this has lead me through a lot of soul searching and the question of whether I would make a good officer. Some of the qualities I feel make a good Fire Officer are professional, technical knowledge in all aspects of the job, having leadership qualities, and having good decision making abilities.

To have professional knowledge and technical knowledge are two different things but go hand in hand when it comes to being an officer. The technical knowledge aspect is extremely important in that the job can be so diverse in its settings from one moment to the next. A large portion of the job now is Emergency Medical Services or EMS. Having advanced training in this field is essential for a good officer today because that is the majority of the call volume. Further more, technical knowledge is essential in other areas of the job that can be highly technical in nature. For example, Hazardous Materials or Haz-Mat and building construction are two of the areas that are highly technical in nature. Poor knowledge base in these area can lead to the wrong tactics and strategies being used at an incident and putting firefighters and the public in further danger. Understanding how a building is put together, can help an officer predict when it will fall down. Likewise, understanding Haz-Mat will prevent you from spreading a chemical spill, or knowing that it is better to let some chemicals burn. The professional knowledge aspect is what I would call the understanding and savvy to understand the unfortunate political part of the job. By this I mean the inter-department politics as well as the municipal, state, and federal politics that are an unfortunate but a necessary part of the job.

Now as far as the leadership aspect, some will say that good leaders are made and others will say that good leaders are born. Being a good leader can be somewhat subjective in its definition, but I believe is largely made up of personal characteristics. My vision of a good leader is someone that people want to work for, someone that others seek them out to be associate with. Respect is an essential part of being a good leader and that may be the most difficult part to obtain. Some believe that just by having the title or rank you gain respect through the position. I disagree, I feel respect is earned and that once you have earned their respect, your workers they will follow you anywhere. Trust is another part of being a good leader, in that your workers have to trust you when you ask them to do something difficult. Honesty and humility are important traits that play directly into respect and trust. If your are honest to your subordinates and treat them honestly, you will gain their trust. If you can admit when you are wrong and understand that you are not perfect, others will respect you for that and you will gain their respect.

Lastly, you have to make good decisions, and I believe that this is something that you are born with. Some have it and some don't. The initial decisions a Fire Officer makes can determine the outcome of the whole incident. The philosophy is that the decisions you make in the first ten minutes of an incident, determine what will happen in the first hour, and the decisions you make in the first hour decide what will happen in the first day of the incident, and so on. Decision making is directly related to the other points I have made about a good officer. If you do not have the technical knowledge about an some aspect of the job you will make the wrong decisions when faced with a situation. If you don't know that putting water on burning Magnesium causes the Hydrogen and Oxygen molecules to separate thus making the fire more intense, you can get people hurt and cause more damage. Deciding to put water on it and the resulting bright flash and intense heat will cause your subordinates to be scared and not trust you and in turn loose respect. Deciding to reprimand one employee differently than another for the same infraction will cause your subordinates to loose both respect and trust for you as well.

The test I took last Thursday was a pivotal point in my life and career. This test is only a small part in the steps to promotion but it was a big hurdle for me and a lot of other guys. It was extremely important because the test in not given regularly and the last one was several years ago. I am very proud of my results and I will just say that I did well on the test. I had to prioritize things in my daily life so I could have time to study, like taking care of my kids and forgoing some of the work for this class. I didn't like doing it but it payed off. I feel that I have what it takes to be a good officer and I am excited about my prospects. All the aspects that I have discussed are all distinct in themselves but are also contingent upon each of the others. If you don't have the knowledge, you will make bad decisions, and your guys won't respect you. It is a delicate balance of these traits as well as others to make a good Fire Officer, lacking any one of these traits will put the rest off balance. I have seen good leaders who make poor decisions, and very knowledgeable men who are poor leaders, and great tactical decisions made by guys you cannot trust. Only time will tell if I poses the things that will make me a good officer.

It was all of the above reasons.  And this was after I cut a bunch out.  I just felt mostly that this is what I had to say.  I am long winded by nature anyway.  I guess it spilled over this time.