Where’s the Medic?

By KEVIN JOHNSON

I spent 26 years with a large department outside of Atlanta, Georgia. When I started as a paramedic in 1983, the fire department did it all. EMS was new to the community and was spawned out of a need for prehospital care. In fact, the community was begging for an emergency service that could do it all. Thus, Fire and EMS merged, and the fire department of today was born. The only roadblock to this great concept was that the growing EMS culture was at odds with the heritage and foundation of the fire service’s philosophy and mission. Fire had tradition, and EMS had call volume and heavy demand for a different nature of medical service for the sick and injured.

In 1984, the departments split and polarized management along borders, claiming that EMS missions were different and the demands were high while the fire service enjoyed low volume and high budgets. As the bell rang for community help, the two services combined forces and worked as a well-oiled machine even though their rank structure and true organizational missions varied to some degree. Seventeen years later, in 2001, these two departments merged again and have since attempted to make these two separate entities function as one.