Jobs / Healthcare / 29-2043.00

Paramedics

Administer basic or advanced emergency medical care and assess injuries and illnesses. May administer medication intravenously, use equipment such as EKGs, or administer advanced life support to sick or injured individuals.

US jobs
100,610
Median wage
$60,600 a year
Job family
Healthcare

Can agents do the work of paramedics?

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.

  • GDPvalby OpenAIProject level · Wins plus ties against experts
    84.9%GPT-5.5 · Apr 2026
    Strong
  • GDPval-AAby Artificial AnalysisProject level · GDPval-AA Elo
    1846 EloClaude Opus 5.5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Default Fallback) · 23 Sep 2026
    Unrated
  • MedAgentBenchby Stanford UniversityTask level · Task success rate
    69.7%Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2 · 24 Jan 2025
    Strong

Typical tasks

From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.

  • Perform emergency cardiac care, such as cardioversion and manual defibrillation.
  • Perform emergency invasive intervention before delivering patient to an acute care facility.
  • Coordinate work with other emergency medical team members or police or fire department personnel.
  • Assess nature and extent of illness or injury to establish and prioritize medical procedures.
  • Comfort and reassure patients.
  • Administer first aid treatment or life support care to sick or injured persons in prehospital settings.
  • Operate equipment, such as electrocardiograms (EKGs), external defibrillators, or bag valve mask resuscitators, in advanced life support environments.
  • Perform emergency pharmacological interventions.
  • Administer drugs, orally or by injection, or perform intravenous procedures.
  • Attend training classes to maintain certification licensure, keep abreast of new developments in the field, or maintain existing knowledge.
  • Observe, record, and report to physician the patient's condition or injury, the treatment provided, and reactions to drugs or treatment.
  • Instruct emergency medical response team about emergency interventions to ensure correct application of procedures.
Other job titles for this occupation (11)

Critical Care Paramedic · Firefighter Paramedic · First Responder · Flight Paramedic · Critical Care Flight Paramedic · ED Paramedic (Emergency Department Paramedic) · EMT Paramedic (Emergency Medical Technician Paramedic) · ER Paramedic (Emergency Room Paramedic) · Paramedic Specialist (PS) · Rescue Worker · Responder