This is a surprisingly interesting and relevant post to me that I decided to make an account to comment. I worked in IT and eventually as a programmer for 6 years, had a rough point in my life, and decided to take some time to reconsider my goals. I had always been interested in the medical field, and this was as good an opportunity as ever to do something new. I got my license and now am lucky to work 911 rescue in a larger city, both high call volume and high acuity (5 to 10 calls in 12 hours just on my truck).

Pros: - Societal good: There are few who would argue Emergency Medical personnel do harm. Being able to visibly see your work improving people's lives and contributing directly to the public good is incredibly self gratifying. - Handling emergencies: I am the one people call when things go wrong, in charge of patient care, managing scenes on the medical side. - Problem solving: each situation is unique. Assessing situations, determining patient care, and actively working difficult scenes can be fun and helps fulfill my unmedicated ADHD needs. - Handing out ambulance stickers to kids.

Cons: - Smells - Limited medical scope: I stop bleeding, give people oxygen, and get them to the hospital. I have very few medications, cannot intubate, and am not allowed to interpret an ECG. Paramedic is a 14 month program minimum that is a much larger time and money commitment, and even then, doctors are the ones that actually end up managing full patient care and make final decisions. - Pay: I took a very large pay cut. I knew this would happen, and I was incredibly burnt out at my previous job, but the medical field, especially first responders, gets away with low pay and high hours because they often rely on passion and many new people entering the field at the lower levels.

Ultimately, I still have not figured out what I want to do long term. I could go back to programming, but with the current job market, that seems inadvisable. THe medical field will pretty much always guarantee some job. I do want to pivot (still have not completed college), but see above untreated ADHD along with a few other personal things I need to work on. Nursing has higher pay, but puts you underneath doctors such that you rarely make independent medical decisions. And paramedic/firefighter is nice, but hard on the body plus issues in the culture previously discussed.

For anyone considering it, I do recommend taking a class. You can do it in 4 months with a one day a week class (how I did it), and volunteer somewhere. But understand the tradeoffs and recognize that is far from glamorous most of the time.

I have a brother-in-law with a pretty textbook case of ADHD (and a more than a bit of combat related PTSD) who worked up through EMT/Paramedic to being a nurse to being basically top of the heap. He did cardiac surgery nurse for a while, then ran an ER, and these days he's doing contracts. Seems to me (as an observer) that the chaos he works with dovetails with 'effective' part of ADHD and he's very successful. Tangent: since you have some background in IT, you'll be able to handle Epic and the other EHR systems with little problem and you will be very popular amongst your coworkers.

As far as the job...things for entry/junior level in IT are frankly extremely bleak. I haven't seen an entry level job rec get approved in maybe a year. And I'm watching lots of my peers getting let go; it's a bad time to be old or young in IT. OTOH...not just my BiL but my wife is in health care, and whatever downside the job holds, 'no one is hiring' and 'they're laying off folks left and right' are absolutely not something they are worrying about.

And no matter what the downsides, no matter the lack of appreciation and compensation, you're actually helping people. That's better than most of us. Best of luck.

> Nursing has higher pay, but puts you underneath doctors such that you rarely make independent medical decisions

But a good nurse can listen and advocate for patients in a very impactful way!

> Cons: Smells

I'm curious about this...?