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>> My name is Barbie Law.

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And, I'm a battalion chief and paramedic.

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For people to be successful in emergency
medical technician and paramedic-type careers,

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there really are a lot of soft
skills involved with that.

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And, by soft skills, I mean
being able to deal with people.

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Having a sense of empathy for
what people are going through.

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And, being able to keep a calm and
cool head, and control situations.

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What we're looking for in a paramedic is someone

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that can demonstrate strong
critical thinking skills.

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That they're going to be able to take the
skills that they learn in school on how

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to do a patient assessment, and be
able to bring that out to the field,

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and correlate it to an actual person.

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>> EMS isn't for the faint-hearted,
and that's for sure.

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You know, it's a lot of long hours on your feet.

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Working under pressure in stressful situations.

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Going into a call, you don't
know what you're going to get.

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So, you have to be able to jump to treatments,
and be able to treat the patient accordingly.

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All of the info is kind of shoveled
into your brain the first semester.

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The second semester, you work on your skills.

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The third semester, you have a preceptor,
and you're actually working in the field,

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on an ambulance, doing what a paramedic
is going to do, under supervision.

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It's a lot of time you have to put in.

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But, in the end, you have a solid
foundation you can build from in the field.

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>> Right now is a really exciting time,
especially in California, for paramedics,

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because there are so many
providers that are hiring right now,

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in both the private ambulance industry, as well
as public service and the fire departments.

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There're so many people coming

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into the profession right now,
and there's so much competition.

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If it came down to, I'm looking at a
resume for a person with a degree that went

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through the community college system, and
I'm looking at somebody that strictly went

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to paramedic school and nothing else --

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we're going to go with the person
with the degree 100% of the time.

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