LearningNursing - I fully respect ALL nurses - some of my best friends are nurses, so I want to make that clear from the start. All of them also agree that nursing in hospital is completely different from attending an accident scene. Let me give you some examples from my shift today alone: Call to an 84 year old male, Cardiac Arrest. Sadly, there was nothing we could do for him, so we spent the next hour looking after is wife, helping her notify relatives, arranging the GP to call and certify death, making her a cup of tea and some breakfast. We can autonomously do recognition of life extinct. Call to young girl in Labour - full term, birth imminent. She'd had no ante-natal care as she hadn't told anyone she was pregnant as she was scared how her family would react. She didn't want to keep the baby. Persuaded her to give personal details, and coached her through the labour until reaching the labour ward. Had it been necessary we could have delivered the baby, cut the cord, and delivered the placenta. Unconscious diabetic - gave injection of glucagon, patient recovered and declined A&E. Ensured patient had eaten and was safe to leave. Severe Asthma attack - gave salbutamol nebuliser, chest became quiet (a sign that the condition is becoming life-threatening), so gave injection of adrenaline before transport under a priority call to hospital. The point is, all of these procedures were carried out by a technician with just "a few GCSEs" - me. And that's not including doing ECGs and interpreting to confirm a heart attack before directly admitting them to a catheter lab for an immediate heart operation, extricating people from crashed cars, dealing with volatile situations where people have been stabbed, assaults, groups of drunks etc. as well as carrying sometimes quite heavy people (18 stone +) up and down stairs In hospital you have security to call on - we have the police, who rarely have units available to send to help us (even for urgent calls). If it goes bent in hospital, you call for a doctor. If it goes bent for us, we have ourselves and that's it. Again, I'm not knocking nurses, and fully believe they should be getting more money than they do already, but please don't ask technicians to accept a pay band that doesn't recognise the skills we use. The two jobs really are quite different, and I hope I've gone some way to help point out where some of the differences are. I agree with Tom - arrange a rideout with your local ambulance station and see what we really do.