First let me say right up front, my usual mode of dress as the Southern Job is blue medic pants, a t-shirt, and either a polar fleece vest or a light jacket.

This is our uniform and it is how the community is used to seeing us, should we change uniforms then I will adjust my manner of dress. What I do make sure I do is to polish my boots, have a clean uniform, and make sure I am swapping out t-shirts as they become battered or worn out.  In essence I look the part of a small town Paramedic who cares about his job and his appearance, as a note this does not entirely apply to calls at 3 A.M. when we are rousted from our beds.

For a number of years I worked for a fairly large private ambulance service here in the metro area, our standard uniform was a white medic shirt, blue EMS pants, polished boots and weather appropriate outerwear, I made sure I was in uniform and ready to start my day, I also made sure that if my shirt got dirty I would do my best to clean it on the spot and change it as soon as possible.  There were many of my co-workers that would come in wearing flip flops, or with a dirty shirt, or things not tucked in and would remain that way until they got a call, often times putting their untied boots on while going into a home. When I  became a preceptor for the Paramedic program I had three rules, be on-time, be dressed, and don’t leave your food wrappers in the back of my rig (this included the garbage can), if you could manage to handle those three things I would forgive just about anything that didn’t legitmately harm our patient.  Toward the time I started my college degree program my service started issuing polo-shirts to our staff for special event coverage, because I was on nights and couldn’t make it in during daytime hours they never got me one, much to the irritation of my partners because both crew members needed to be dressed the same, and if I didn’t have a polo shirt then we had to wear the standard medic uniform.  Polo shirts are great if you are working a special event where you need to look casual yet still be in uniform, but much like my t-shirts they need to be replaced regularly and the service wasn’t willing to eat that cost, many staff would simply not replace them, or if they were like me would burn their rather small uniform allowance on replacements.

Recently I was looking through pictures posted by my former service and was noting that every person in the picures were wearing their baggy, ill fitting, mangled collar special event polo shirts, honestly they looked like a bunch of slobs, and when compared to what the service actually does, they were not looking the part all that well.

My opinion on uniform is not groundless, early on when I started in EMS I had hair that went down to the middle of my back, my off duty dress was heavy metal t-shirts and jeans, sometimes worn several days in a row I looked like a scrubby kid (this was before I really got into lifting and other pursuits) and most people who saw me would think that, but when I put on my uniform, pulled my hair back in a pony tail, i looked like a professional EMS provider, just with a pony tail.