“Helping You Live The Life You Want, If Times Get Tough, Or Even If They Don’t”. Jack from TSP [ www.TheSurvivalPodcast.com ] does a good job of articulating it.
Another and older way of saying this is that “Provident living is a way of life.” Which is how many of us were raised. I have lived by this for MANY years. It is too bad that some forget to pass it on to their kids and grandkids.
Anyway the point that I would like to make as far as skills go from a medical standpoint is that EMT training is great and “sexy” and all of that and it does come in handy at times. For entry level though and to be able to earn money as you go or to have something that you could ‘fallback on” in this wonderful economy, it is hard to beat CNA training.
Certified Nursing Assistants typically have around 120 hours of classroom and clinical training [about 3 weeks] before they take the board test and get a license from the State Board of Nursing. Every hospital and/or nursing home is always short of good staff to care for patients. Pay rates can start as low as $8.00 an hour to as high as $15 -17 an hour depending on experience. In my 40+ years of nursing practice in everything from EMS, OR, OB to ICU/NICU, along with teaching nursing and medical students and CNAs & EMTs – the people who start out as a CNA and then go on to EMT or other training, consistently do better than the ones who do EMT first and then CNA.
Another issue to ponder; there are 24 hours in the day. EMT [and Paramedic] focuses on the “golden hour” which is the first hour after an injury in a day to day situation; CNA teaches you how to care for a person for the 23.5 + hours that it takes someone to recover after the injury.
Which is going to be used more?
YMMV but that is my 2 cents worth [not adjusted for inflation]