SII, E13- One Degree of Separation: Paramedicine and Practitioners

So, you know, the, the other, the other criticisms I think we, we all see online, you always see those comments along the lines of, "Well, how does us taking English literature make me better at starting IVs?" Right? Or-

Right

... better at whatever procedure the person wants to use as the example.

Okay, so, you know, for one thing it's like, hey, starting IVs is not what being a paramedic is about.

You know? That's-

Right

... [chuckles] that's just like the sim- one of the simplest tasks.

So many healthcare professionals do that.

That's not what makes a paramedic, right? So that just annoys me whenever people use those examples.

I'd be a little bit more, uh, uh, open to that kind of argument if it was like, you know, "How's taking English literature make me better at RSI?" Right? [chuckles] Or, or something where there's actually, like, a real, real potential for some, you know, real bad outcomes if you really screw that up.

So, so okay, let's just put that annoyance aside for a second.

You know, o- o- one, o- one answer to that question actually is, like, well, right, the English literature class and the IV or the intubation or whatever, they don't really have a close relationship.

But certainly taking English classes is probably gonna make you a better writer, better charterer, you know, m- m- that is maybe gonna increase, you know, reimbursement rates to your company, and the financial picture improves, and might make you a better communicator.

You know, when you study literature, you study the classics.

You tend to think about the human saga and the human condition.

You become more empathetic.

You become a little bit more open-minded.

These are all good things, and again, that's why higher education tends to be good for people and good for communities.

But there's really...

the, my, my, uh, belief in the power of the degree is because all those things I just mentioned in, in the example of English literature, those are the things that start to transform the profession.

Not necessarily, you know, transformative, I wanna asterisk that, not necessarily transformative to cot side or bedside patient care, although it could be.

It really just depends on how you want to apply what you've learned, right, in that educational journey.

But, but, you know, um, it's, you know, let's, let's kind of z- zoom out from that one-to-one patient care interaction and, and just think about all of the things that a profession, being a profession and being successful in achieving their professional goals, think about everything that that requires, right? So, so paramedicine, EMS, whatever we wanna call it, there's so much more to it than that next call or that last call.

There's the relationships between people in the workplace.

There's the ability to advocate for ourselves or not, the ability to figure out how to translate what we do into terms that are gonna be understood by legislators and the public or not, the ability to You know, analyze and think critically about the systems in which we're operating and, and whether or not they're working, and what the impact of different policy choices is gonna be or not, right? And so, you know, I don't think it's coincidental, and I would argue that there's a lot of literature that really proves it's not coincidental, that these, you know, other healthcare professions that have long since embraced a degree standard for at least some level of practice are enjoying more success as a profession.