This is a memoir about his first year working as an ambulance paramedic in Hartford, Connecticut. I found it interesting and informative, and the fact that he’d worked in the state health bureaucracy previously gives another layer to his book. He also provides good descriptions of the city.

What surprised me the most in his book was that they had to pick up drunks who were unsteady on their feet, because the poor men could fall and injure themselves, check their medical condition, give them fluids or medications if it could help them feel better, and take them to the hospital where they got a bed and a meal, usually for free because all these alcoholics seemed to have state health insurance. Canning writes that the local rehab was much more particular in regards to whom it would accept (a person had to be able to walk and be well-behaved), but the hospital had to take in everybody. Some of these drunkards came to the hospital so often that everybody on staff knew their names. A nurse told the author about one of them that he cost the state $800,000 a year in hospitalization bills alone. I must say that I found it very strange that while people in low-paid positions who don’t get health insurance from work and can’t afford to pay for necessary health care don’t get any help from the state, and neither do people whose HMOs refuse to pay for necessary treatments, drunks get free room and board at hospitals. Then again, this book was written in 1997, so it could have changed by now.

Another thing that surprised me was that although ambulance personnel always ask patients what hospital they want to go to, I assumed that they were affiliated with one of the hospitals and had good salaries and benefits. But it turned out that that’s not at all the case. Ambulance services, like police and fire services, fall into the purview of the city authorities, but unlike policemen and firefighters, ambulance personnel are rarely city employees. Sometimes ambulance services are outsourced to private companies who pay paramedics – the highest-skilled people in ambulances – $14 an hour and rarely provide pension plans (at least when this book was written). Other towns just have basic units staffed with volunteers who can provide basic first aid, but can do little for a heart attack victim. I was also surprised to read, “When we go to nursing homes or corporations, they always make us use the rear entrances by the trash bins and loading docks.”

And there’s another curious pattern I’ve noticed. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but having read a number of various memoirs, it appears to me that men who adopt children, for some reason, feel the need to tell their readers repeatedly exactly how much money they make, while male medics, for some strange reason, seem to have the need to tell their readers repeatedly exactly how tall they are. I’ve never seen either trend with adoptive mothers or female medic memoirists. ( )

I read the sequel to Paramedic about two months ago, and this first book is much of the same. This is part of my continued research for my novel. I've been reading so much about EMS that it's starting to creep into my dreams.

Peter Canning was a speechwriter with powerful connections throughout the northeast and Washington D.C. However, he gave up his big paycheck and nice office to go and work on the streets of Hartford, Connecticut, as a paramedic. He sees many of the same drunks day to day, is frustrated with the system, and every now and then makes a big save that makes everything worthwhile. For my selfish purposes, I wish he had gone into more details about some of the mundane details of dispatches and paperwork, but it still provides me with many ideas. ( )