The growing need for paramedics and the difficulty in keeping them, leading Cookeville to increase paramedic wages by some $5,000 in the new fiscal year.
City Manager James Mills said medical calls make up most fire calls received by the city. He said he hopes to have a paramedic available during every shift.
“It’s hard to retain paramedics, they’re in demand all over the country,” Mills said. “We had to get our pay up to encourage not only those who are already paramedics to stay, but encourage those that aren’t to have a desire to go to school and take the training to become a paramedic.”
Mills said pay raises are partly to retain paramedics, and larger cities are the biggest source of competition. Despite this, Mills said paramedics leaving their jobs with Cookeville is uncommon.
“What we’re having a hard time doing is increasing the number of paramedics,” Mills said. “We hope [the raises] will do that. As I mentioned, we have these squad vehicles that go on medical calls, and our goal is to have a paramedic on each of those.”
Cookeville paramedics will see their stipend increase from $4,680 per year to $7,800 annually, or an extra $300 per paycheck. Mills said this is in addition to the $2,000 raise for all city employees.
Mills said paramedics ride in the “squad vehicles,” which are heavy duty pickup trucks used in place of fire trucks during medical calls. Mills said paramedics start as EMTs, and move up with additional training. Mills said being a paramedic is hard work because they must be able to address whatever injury or illness on scene.
“Usually, [paramedics] are the first ones on the scene,” Mills said. “And they have to be able to diagnose and determine what’s going on in a really quick fashion. That way, we can save lives.”
