Today marks a full decade since I last donned my working attire and responded to ambulance calls. The last time I treated and transported an ill or injured patient.

For a while I had misgivings about retiring, but looking back it was the right time to leave. Maybe not a “good” time, but clearly the right time.

I had tired of the daily grind of working the night shift and didn’t want the arguably worse daily grind of working the day shift. After all, on nights work was very straightforward. Answer the radio, go to the call assigned, make contact with the patient, and most of the time take the patient to the hospital.

On days it was all that, plus a worse commute, more traffic in the city, and of course… bosses. On nights I had one boss, but on days the full cast of managers was usually around to “help” with doing the same job I had been doing for almost 35 years.

Unlike some friends, I’m just not a guy who can sit around and watch the calendar move forward. On the other hand, I didn’t want to be tied down to a set schedule. For that reason a job at a place like a hardware store was out. They expect part timers to cover the unpopular shifts. Or they did then, now they don’t care what shift someone works if they will just come to work.

But I digress.

As I said, I had some misgivings about leaving the only job I’d had as an adult. I mentioned this to a former co worker shortly after I retired and he had an interesting reply. “You don’t miss the job, you’re nostalgic for the job.” He went on to suggest that if I somehow magically could unretire, I’d regret it in three days.

In retrospect, he was right. Nor did I care to go to work for a private ambulance service doing transfer work. When another friend suggested that I might want to do that, I told him that if I wanted to continue working on an ambulance I’d have stayed with my much better paying city job.

As it happened my last partner set me on the path to my post retirement career. Towards the end of my time with Sorta Big City EMS we were talking about my future plans. I mentioned the possibility of teaching EMT courses, but he said that wouldn’t be a good fit for me.

He said that I had way too much real world experience and knowledge to be able to teach what is in the textbooks with a straight face. I laughed for two reasons. First it was funny. Second it was true.

Just as lawyers to to law school to learn the law, but not how to lawyer, EMS providers go to school to learn a lot about illnesses and patient care. They do not however, learn of what the real world of EMS consists.

Burns, stabbings, heart attacks, diabetic incidents, and generally acute illnesses are taught in school. What isn’t taught is how to talk to a patient. More importantly, neither is how to listen to a patient and how that can tell you a lot about why they really called.

Students are taught to diligently copy down a list of patient medications, but not how to use that information to help figure out what might be wrong with the patient.

Students are taught that chest pain should be considered cardiac until proven otherwise, but until recently the text books didn’t cover the reality that many patients never have chest pain.

That is the kind of thing an experienced paramedic or EMT understands from experience. Remember, experience is often something you have about five seconds after you needed it.

I treated a lot of patients and made a lot of mistakes over the years. Most of them were minor and fortunately none that I know of actually harmed a patient.

Also, I was fortunate enough to work in a system where it was common to have daily contact with our medical director and other physicians with university affiliations. Due to that, I had a lot more opportunity to learn from accomplished physicians from  highly regarded hospitals and medical schools.

I sure benefited from that and learned much more than the typical EMT or paramedic is likely too. Free and high quality education, there is little better than that.

Maybe it’s conceit, but I thought it would be a waste to walk away from all of that accumulated experience and education and not share it with newer providers who hadn’t had the luck to work in a system where clinical excellence was valued.

I tried a formal EMS school for a while, but the owner didn’t appreciate me deviating from the established curriculum and although the pay was very good for a part time, supplemental job, I just wasn’t happy there.

As luck would have it, I stumbled onto a job where I could mostly make my own hours, work with people who were already certified and working in the field, and use my knowledge and experience to improve their patient care.

It also gives me something to look forward to each day.

As I look back over the last ten years and beyond, it occurs to me that I’ve been very fortunate.

My current boss likes what I do and how I do it. The providers I work with seem to like they way I approach what is often the least liked part of EMS. I make some money and meet some nice people.

Perhaps the best part is that I never have to work a weekend, holiday, or night shift. Nor do I have to stand outside in the cold at a fire or other standby event.

I refer to this as “work like activity” because I get paid, but don’t have to carry people up or down stairs, lift a stretcher (not that anyone does that any more), nor enjoy all the sights and smells of EMS.

I’m a lucky man.