Running Hot

This is where it all began–to my knowledge, this book is the very first book-length sociology of ambulance work. Like its successors, Metz’s book is based on ethnographic research methods. Published in 1981, and given the changes that have enveloped paramedicine in the last twenty years, this book is now very dated.

But what I found fascinating was that many important elements and controversies of ambulance work described here remain relevant today. Metz and his colleagues in an EMS provider company regularly muse about the mismatch between the intended design of the EMS system as an emergency system and the… show more.