Well, I have to say, I work as a volunteer and as a paid firefighter/medic, and I see big issues with training on both sides of the fence.
On the volunteer side, we only do it when we are required to do it. I try to motivate folks to do at least an hour of training when you run a shift, but the usual excuses of "I work tomorrow," "I'm tired," etc. are generally thrown in.
On the paid side, it's training usually geared more towards fire, but you get audited on EMS stuff and only truely hands on practice it when it's required for recertification. The arguement with more fire training than fire is that you run EMS 80% of the time, so the assumption is that you get your practice there. However, most calls are not the major ones, they're illness, difficulty breathing, or chest pain calls requiring very little thought. Then you get the one call where a guy's face is wide open and you have to hold his jaw together to use a BVM on him, and it's utter chaos.
It's just disheartening to hear the excuses. I still practice and read all the time, but I wish that as volunteers, we'd understand that we do this because we enjoy it, and should enjoy practicing to be good at what we do. As paid personnel, if we're going to be professionals, we need equal emphasis on both fire and medical sides, and furthermore, we need to start making training fun. Do it in a setting that doesn't have your job relying on it so you can be allowed to make a mistake and learn from it, rather than making a mistake later that can cause injury or death. Well, that's the end of Johnny's rant. Fire back if you folks have an opinion.