Collier County Emergency Medical Services (EMS) is the county-wide prehospital care provider serving Naples, Marco Island, Immokalee, Golden Gate, and the unincorporated areas of Collier County, Florida. Established in 1981 under the Department of Public Safety, Collier County EMS operates 25 stations with 26 full-time ambulances and two MedFlight helicopters, responding to more than 48,000 emergency calls annually across 2,300 square miles. The agency is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services (CAAS) and staffed by highly trained paramedics and EMTs who provide advanced life support and critical care transport. In addition to emergency response, Collier EMS offers community programs such as CPR, AED, and “Stop the Bleed” training, as well as public outreach and mental-health support initiatives. Led by Chief Bruce Gastineau, the agency continues to balance operational growth and workforce challenges while maintaining its mission to deliver compassionate, timely, and professional emergency medical care to the residents and visitors of Collier County.
The department has a 24/48 schedule. The admin is a complete dumpster fire. For the most part though they do have nice equipment and vehicles. Call volume is about 60k a year. Pay isn’t the worst. The admin situation has tanked the moral of the place though. Admin tends to not care what the road has to say. They seems to blatantly lie to the crews face. There is zero trust of what comes out of their mouth. A bunch of people who know best yet haven’t been on a truck in 10-20 years.
Avoid this department at all costs. The morale is absolute crap, we are mandating almost every day, administration (both County and department) are the worst of the worst. CCEMS is the laughing stock of the county and are considered “third responders”. One of the fire districts in the county started transporting in July of 2025 and are blowing EMS away in every aspect. We are coming up on a year of “negotiating” a garbage contract, we can barely get uniforms, there are no standards, new hire academy is a joke, admin never admit their faults and aren’t held accountable for anything, specialties are pretty much fake, trucks are garbage, stations are garbage, the list goes on. They can’t seem to build a new station correctly to save their lives, they test for promotions and then dont promote or scrap the list and make everyone re-test, its a stepping stone revolving door for high achievers………..I could be here for hours. Just completely skip this place and forget it exists.
Absolute trash. Every aspect of this place. Avoid it like the plague. I’d say they have some sort of high school attitude, but it’s 10 times worse than that. They have some weird god complex up in that admin office and even out on the road, and yet still somehow don’t even know what the **** they’re doing. It’s honestly pretty embarrassing. Their operations are horrible. They don’t even give class uniforms, even though their contract states it’s a requirement. The pay is some of the worst. The contract isn’t the absolute worst, but combined with everything else, it’s absolutely not worth it. Even if it was the highest paid, it’s not worth it. It’s like they found the worst people on the planet and gave them all admin positions. I heard that someone even got assaulted by the head chief of EMS two or three years ago. I’ve been here for ten years, and the uniform things I tried to handle never got handled. They never have a plan to fix anything, and I haven’t found one person with a decade or more of experience that likes this place; however, they’re forced to continue retirement. There are the few that like it here, but that’s because they’re part of some weird clique. Training for teams and other positions is very selective and only matters if your knees hurt enough. As a medic, it’s a dead end if you do your job properly because they just end up getting jealous and weird. For new or experienced people, it’s not worth it. Run, don’t walk.
Rating Breakdown
1/5
1/5
3/5
1.7/5
3 Reviews on “Collier County EMS & Fire”
The department has a 24/48 schedule. The admin is a complete dumpster fire. For the most part though they do have nice equipment and vehicles. Call volume is about 60k a year. Pay isn’t the worst. The admin situation has tanked the moral of the place though. Admin tends to not care what the road has to say. They seems to blatantly lie to the crews face. There is zero trust of what comes out of their mouth. A bunch of people who know best yet haven’t been on a truck in 10-20 years.
Avoid this department at all costs. The morale is absolute crap, we are mandating almost every day, administration (both County and department) are the worst of the worst. CCEMS is the laughing stock of the county and are considered “third responders”. One of the fire districts in the county started transporting in July of 2025 and are blowing EMS away in every aspect. We are coming up on a year of “negotiating” a garbage contract, we can barely get uniforms, there are no standards, new hire academy is a joke, admin never admit their faults and aren’t held accountable for anything, specialties are pretty much fake, trucks are garbage, stations are garbage, the list goes on. They can’t seem to build a new station correctly to save their lives, they test for promotions and then dont promote or scrap the list and make everyone re-test, its a stepping stone revolving door for high achievers………..I could be here for hours. Just completely skip this place and forget it exists.
Absolute trash. Every aspect of this place. Avoid it like the plague. I’d say they have some sort of high school attitude, but it’s 10 times worse than that. They have some weird god complex up in that admin office and even out on the road, and yet still somehow don’t even know what the **** they’re doing. It’s honestly pretty embarrassing. Their operations are horrible. They don’t even give class uniforms, even though their contract states it’s a requirement. The pay is some of the worst. The contract isn’t the absolute worst, but combined with everything else, it’s absolutely not worth it. Even if it was the highest paid, it’s not worth it. It’s like they found the worst people on the planet and gave them all admin positions. I heard that someone even got assaulted by the head chief of EMS two or three years ago. I’ve been here for ten years, and the uniform things I tried to handle never got handled. They never have a plan to fix anything, and I haven’t found one person with a decade or more of experience that likes this place; however, they’re forced to continue retirement. There are the few that like it here, but that’s because they’re part of some weird clique. Training for teams and other positions is very selective and only matters if your knees hurt enough. As a medic, it’s a dead end if you do your job properly because they just end up getting jealous and weird. For new or experienced people, it’s not worth it. Run, don’t walk.