By William Kaempffer
The New Haven Register
NEW HAVEN, Conn. — The Fire Department is strapped for paramedics and the city, for the first time, is moving forward with a hiring exam restricted to people who already have certification.
For about a year, the city has been discussing a fire union supported plan to offer a paramedics-only entry-level exam to help fill a growing number of positions.
The department has now reached a near-critical staffing level.
Running two ambulances 24 hours a day, seven days a week, requires a minimum of eight paramedics to cover all the shifts. The department has nine, according to city spokesman Adam Joseph.
That leaves few options for coverage other than bringing paramedics back on overtime to cover vacations or sick days. It also makes it difficult to rotate paramedics back to fire engines to keep those skills fresh.
All paramedics are crosstrained as firefighters. A starting firefighter in New Haven earns about $35,000 a year, Joseph said.
“This is a critical service for the department and for the city, and it’s being provided. But we’re strapped right now with the numbers we have,” said Fire Chief Michael Grant. “That’s a big thing for them. It (the additional staffing) will allow us to rotate people in and out of the units. It’s really difficult for people to keep up with this pace.”
Last week, the city solicited “requests for proposals” from testing consultants to administer the hiring exam. The jobs could be posted by the end of the month, and a tentative schedule is to have the test completed by September.
Joseph said the city would like to hire as many as eight paramedics.
Firefighter Patrick Egan, the fire union president, said the city should hire “as many as they can get.”
The paramedics would still have to attend the fire academy to get their firefighter certification, but it should be an abbreviated course. New firefighters attend a 20-week academy that includes training as an emergency medical technician, which the already-qualified paramedics would not have to complete since they are trained beyond the EMT level.
The department, in the past, had offered to send firefighters to paramedic school, but found no takers. The reluctance was likely driven, city officials have acknowledged, by the experience of their overworked colleagues. The hope is that if the department were to add paramedics and start a regular rotation, some internal candidates would be more willing to get the training.
Egan said he was glad to see the city will “finally move forward to fill the ranks of paramedics.”
“They’re a very important job in the services we provide,” he said. “Through attrition and retirements over the years, it certainly has put a strain on the remaining dedicated men and women.
“The people who do it, they take pride in it, just like all personnel on the job,” he added. “But it’s tough when the department is asking you to work so many more hours because they don’t have the personnel to fill the spots.”
Copyright 2009 New Haven