Jobs / Healthcare / 29-2042.00
Emergency Medical Technicians
Assess injuries and illnesses and administer basic emergency medical care. May transport injured or sick persons to medical facilities.
- US jobs
- 180,510
- Median wage
- $44,470 a year
- Job family
- Healthcare
Can agents do the work of emergency medical technicians?
We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Healthcare:
- Task levelPartialOne benchmark, from early 2025. On Stanford's MedAgentBench, where agents do clinical tasks in a simulated electronic health record, the best recorded model completes 69.7% of tasks (Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2). It has no maintained leaderboard, so newer models are not measured. No benchmark in our collection tests work with patients.
- Project levelPartialOnly adjacent evidence. GDPval includes nurses among its 44 occupations. OpenAI reports that GPT-5.5's deliverables won or tied against professionals' work in 84.9% of comparisons across all occupations. No benchmark in our collection tests clinical work over days, such as managing a patient's care.
Benchmarks for the job family
These cover work in healthcare, not always this occupation's tasks.
- 1846 EloClaude Opus 5.5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Default Fallback) · 23 Sep 2026Unrated
Typical tasks
From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.
- Administer first aid treatment or life support care to sick or injured persons in prehospital settings.
- Assess nature and extent of illness or injury to establish and prioritize medical procedures.
- Attend training classes to maintain certification licensure, keep abreast of new developments in the field, or maintain existing knowledge.
- Comfort and reassure patients.
- Communicate with dispatchers or treatment center personnel to provide information about situation, to arrange reception of survivors, or to receive instructions for further treatment.
- Coordinate work with other emergency medical team members or police or fire department personnel.
- Decontaminate ambulance interior following treatment of patient with infectious disease, and report case to proper authorities.
- Drive mobile intensive care unit to specified location, following instructions from emergency medical dispatcher.
- Immobilize patient for placement on stretcher and ambulance transport, using backboard or other spinal immobilization device.
- Maintain vehicles and medical and communication equipment, and replenish first aid equipment and supplies.
- Observe, record, and report to physician the patient's condition or injury, the treatment provided, and reactions to drugs or treatment.
- Perform emergency diagnostic and treatment procedures, such as stomach suction, airway management, or heart monitoring, during ambulance ride.
Other job titles for this occupation (25)
Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) · First Responder · Advanced Emergency Medical Technician (AEMT) · Ambulance Driver · Dispatcher · Emergency Department Technician (ED Technician) · Emergency Medical Driver · Emergency Medical Responder · Emergency Medical Technician - Basic (EMT-B) · Emergency Room Technician · EMT Paramedic (Emergency Medical Technician Paramedic) · EMT-B (Emergency Medical Technician- Basic) · EMT-I/85 · EMT-I/99 · EMT-P · Health Care Specialist · Healthcare Specialist · Medical Driver · Medical Equipment Delivery Driver · Medical Technician · Non-Emergency Medical Transportation Driver · Onsite Medical Representative (Onsite Medical Rep) · Paramedic · Rescue Technician (Rescue Tech) · Rescue Worker