{
  "source": "Cooked Index — occupational AI risk register",
  "page": "https://cookedindex.com/jobs/emergency-medical-technicians/",
  "methodology": "https://cookedindex.com/methodology",
  "notice": "Verdicts are re-examined as evidence accumulates. Re-fetch before relying on this; the page above always carries the current score.",
  "scored_at": "2026-08-11",
  "model": "claude-opus-5",
  "occupation": {
    "title": "Emergency Medical Technicians",
    "soc_code": "29-2042",
    "category": "Healthcare",
    "us_employment": 180510,
    "median_annual_wage": 44470
  },
  "verdict": "SAFE",
  "risk_resistance": 76,
  "contested": false,
  "near_boundary": false,
  "dimensions": {
    "task_resistance": 15,
    "embodiment": 20,
    "liability_shield": 13,
    "trust_premium": 15,
    "judgment_accountability": 13
  },
  "reasoning": {
    "task_resistance": "Rolling a patient onto a longboard in a ditch, jaw-thrusting an unresponsive overdose, bagging while your partner drives, and deciding a stairchair won't fit the landing are tasks with no digital analogue — the 15 rather than 18 reflects that ePCR narratives, dispatch card triage, protocol lookup, and billing-code selection are genuinely being absorbed by software already sitting on the tablet you carry.",
    "embodiment": "Every shift is uncontrolled terrain — highway shoulders in rain, third-floor walkups with no elevator, bathrooms too small to kneel in, combative patients, and 300-pound lifts done with two people — which is the definition of the top of the band rather than a case that needs arguing.",
    "liability_shield": "NREMT certification plus state licensure legally gates who may perform interventions and transport, and your name on the run report ties you to the care given; it sits at 13 rather than 18 because you practice under a medical director's standing protocols rather than independent scope, so the physician's license absorbs a real share of the exposure.",
    "trust_premium": "Patients hand over airway control and consent to transport within ninety seconds of meeting you, and that instant credibility carries weight — but the encounter ends at the ED doors and there is no returning client base, which is what separates this from a role where the relationship is the product.",
    "judgment_accountability": "Deciding trauma-center versus community ED, whether this chest pain is a load-and-go, when to stop working an arrest under termination-of-resuscitation criteria, and refusal-of-care capacity calls are real discretionary weight; the 13 rather than 17 is because protocols specify most of your decision tree and online medical control is a radio call away."
  },
  "rationale": "EMTs extricate patients from wrecked cars, control bleeding, splint fractures, manage airways, and lift dead weight down stairwells — none of which any deployable robot does. The automatable slice is the paperwork tail: run reports, ePCR narratives, billing codes, dispatch triage prompts, and protocol lookup. Certification (NREMT plus state licensure) legally gates who may perform interventions and transport, and medical-direction protocols place accountability on a named human in the field.",
  "outlook": "Demand holds or grows with an aging population; AI shows up as ambient documentation and decision-support in the rig, cutting charting time rather than headcount, while pay pressure — not automation — remains the real threat to the job.",
  "what_would_raise_it": {
    "levers": [
      {
        "dimension": "liability_shield",
        "change": "State EMS offices expanding scope-of-practice rules so that AI-generated dispatch triage or ePCR narratives require attestation by the licensed EMT on the run, with the license as the accountable signature — mirroring existing NREMT/state medical-direction attestation on drug administration. Also: state statutes (e.g. community paramedicine authorizing bills in ~20 states) that grant EMTs delegated authority for treat-and-refer decisions, each of which attaches personal licensure liability.",
        "plausibility": "plausible",
        "would_add": 3
      },
      {
        "dimension": "judgment_accountability",
        "change": "Formal adoption of treat-no-transport / alternate-destination protocols under medical direction — where the EMT owns the disposition call (ED vs urgent care vs refusal) rather than transporting by default. CMS's ET3 model piloted exactly this; state reimbursement rules that pay for on-scene decision-making would make the ambiguous call the job's core rather than its edge.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 4
      },
      {
        "dimension": "task_resistance",
        "change": "Task-mix shift as the documentation tier is automated: if ePCR narrative, billing coding, and protocol lookup are absorbed by AI, the residual day is extrication, airway, hemorrhage control, and scene command under uncertainty — none of it automatable. This raises the score without any new law, but only because the automatable slice was already thin.",
        "plausibility": "already happening",
        "would_add": 2
      }
    ],
    "ceiling_note": "Embodiment is already maxed at 20 and cannot rise. The realistic ceiling is in the low-to-mid 80s: gains come almost entirely from scope-of-practice expansion (disposition authority, community paramedicine) converting EMTs from transport labor into accountable decision-makers. The countervailing risk is not automation but deskilling — if protocols become AI-driven checklists with medical direction reviewing remotely, judgment_accountability could fall instead."
  },
  "adjudication": null,
  "employment_history": {
    "points": [
      {
        "y": 2021,
        "emp": 161400,
        "wage": 35470
      },
      {
        "y": 2022,
        "emp": 167720,
        "wage": 36680
      },
      {
        "y": 2023,
        "emp": 167040,
        "wage": 38930
      },
      {
        "y": 2024,
        "emp": 177980,
        "wage": 41340
      },
      {
        "y": 2025,
        "emp": 180510,
        "wage": 44470
      }
    ],
    "from": 2021,
    "to": 2025,
    "change_pct": 11.8,
    "comparable_from": 2021,
    "spans_soc_revision": false
  },
  "pivots": [],
  "license": "https://cookedindex.com/terms"
}