I can't understand anyone who makes comments like that about the ambulance service! There's far too much of this sort of "I'm a (whatever) so I'm obviously superior to you" business going on. My daughter is a hospital porter and she comes across that attitude a lot. Her badge doesn't read "Hospital Porter= no brain". There's a particular person where she works who doesn't like her reading her medical books in her spare moments(some play computer games, some skulk off and sleep). I think it's jealousy and a fear of being threatened professionally. When I did a Nurse Practitioner course we talked about roles and how Doctors have passed on their "toys" eg. stethoscopes on to nurses over the years and the nurses then pass them on to health care assistants. What should happen is that we should all think of patient care first, respect each other's knowledge and work as a team. I think that there should be a core training for doctors, nurses, EMTs, paramedics and then specialisation in the rest of the training.Perhaps then we would understand each other better. The only good thing about this is that is has fired you up so you've written an excellent post which should get us all fired up too!