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My wife and I had a good laugh over an Ohio Department of Public Safety ad campaign promoting EMS that appeared during EMS week last year; it was a series of billboards such as this one:

After we finished chuckling over it, I started thinking–although I maintain that it’s not nearly as ridiculous as her native state’s attempt to persuade people to join health care careers (by which I mean both Pennsylvania’s 3rd most famous groundhog and the more EMS-specific Roll With It campaign).  Less than a week ago, Dr. Crippen of NHS Blog Doc thoughtfully pointed out a Nursing Times story about a Reader’s Digest survey of trust in various professions.  Paramedics don’t appear in the survey, but firefighters are considered trustworthy by 98% of respondents, higher than nurses (95%) or doctors (87%).  (These must be last year’s numbers as they don’t match the 2009 numbers.  Strangely, there is no American version as far as I can tell, and I really question the statistics–92% trust “quite a lot” and 89% trust “not very much.”  Huh?)

It’s really not surprising, though, as I note; there are constantly firefighter billboards around, either as part of safety messages (think Fire Prevention Week), political ones (often put up by FF unions, though not always, like this semi-political one that’s been vandalized for another political thought), or mere laudatory messages (like this one).  In many ways, this is one place where EMS has really dropped the ball:  making ourselves a visible and valuable part of the community.

FDs do have the advantage of frequent free press–most EMS incidents happen one patient at a time, nothing particularly newsworthy, while even a modest house fire will likely have at least one reporter hanging around.  Most multi-patient EMS incidents also have a bunch of FD units at them, who are typically there long after the ambulances are on the way to hospitals; the problem is doubly magnified in regions where most EMS is fire-based.  FDs also have the advantage of a more unified voice–whether paid or volunteer, they’re all doing roughly the same job and are structured similarly, whereas EMS has both 911 and interfacility components (with occasional tension between its two facets).  If you think it doesn’t matter, compare the amount of federal grants available for FDs (admittedly, a portion of which will go to EMS) to those specifically directed towards EMS (and I would provide a link, but my search engine skills aren’t giving me any results tonight, sadly).

As kind of an aside, I’ll let Nurse Anne point out one other possible reason for firefighters’ high ranking, which I quote in whole only because I find it both depressing and hysterical:

I want to see one lone firefighter forced to fight 12 separate fires in 12 different places all at one time day in and day out for 12 hour days. Then stop him from getting any help and threaten him with legal action if he fails in his task.

I wonder if the public would call him uncaring and lazy when things burned down, as they do to doctors and nurses.

The jobs are just a touch different.

Bonus link:  my favorite Sprite commercial ever.

Filed under: EMS