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Everyone except the driver has ample time to swap boots during the drive to the location. (In cases where not, I'd also default to robust safety boots.)

Depending on the boots, you might not want to wear them while "idle"¹ in any case, though that's mostly a non-concern with modern safety shoes.

¹ mandatory note: most emergency responders have tons of work while "idle", I just mean "not actively responding"

by Georgelemental6 hours ago|

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You don't always know what the location is like though. You are called to an apartment: maybe it is spotlessly clean, maybe the floor is littered with used needles

by analog314 hours ago|

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A friend of mine who was a paramedic told me that getting people out of a building is actually heavy, dangerous work. "They always die on the crapper, up 3 flights of stairs."

Also, in my town, the firefighters are also paramedics. The first people who showed up in my Moment of Need came in a fire truck. The ambulance came a couple minutes later.

by Georgelemental4 hours ago|

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For particularly heavy patients, on occasion the only way is to knock down a wall.

by ErroneousBosh3 hours ago|

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I think I've mentioned it before here but at a hospital near me a few years ago they got a bariatric patient in who was so large they couldn't weigh her. I suggested that since they were near a VOSA inspection site they could have just had the whole ambulance on the weighbridge, but apparently when someone is around 350kg you kind of don't need that degree of accuracy.

The hospital facilities team removed the front doors and the unboltable parts of the frame, and then gassed off the handrails and wheelchair ramp fittings to give access.

The ambulance arrived followed by a fire brigade Landrover with four guys in and a rescue pump with another five. It took all of them to lift the patient into the hospital on a canvas sling.

by left-struck4 hours ago|

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That would be very unlikely in Japan, maybe it would happen a handful of times in your career and you could indeed put on safer boots.

Anyway I’m not against paramedics wearing boots in my apartment, in an emergency very few people would care about that even in Japan.

by Georgelemental4 hours ago|

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How certain are you that it is so rare? EMS are disproportionately called to the poorest and most miserable.