To be fair, some of the stories he told me are horrific enough not to share, and its amazing that those weren't the issues that made him leave. They certainly could have had a cumulative effect.
There was one "gallows humor" story of an obviously fatal bicycle accident. As paramedics, they could not declare the victim dead. They had to have authorization from the hospital.
The hospital insisted they send the EKG data back.
They said "Ok", and rather than going through the effort of connecting up the victim, they just stuck the leads to the truck and said "here it comes".
Then they got the OK to declare there at the scene.
I probably misunderstood the context. Both checking life signs on, say, a headless body or imitating the check for the sake of bureaucracy sound equally terrible :(
If it helps, in a lot of place "injuries incomparable with life" are sufficient to cease care on a patient.
Still (and this is a general opinion unrelated to any judgement about the OP's story, which I don't hold any opinion on), finding a pulse can be hard for a lot of folks in a lot of situations.
I'm pretty okay with, say, 20-year-old EMT-Bs needing a bit more bureaucracy before they declare me dead. It takes about 90 seconds to place a 4-lead, no shade on those kiddos.
One I'll call John. He was a fantastic medic. Calm and reassuring in the toughest situations, and he was a great teacher of new EMTs. He had seen everything. Farming accidents (they're terrible), DRTs, MVAs, MCIs, child abuse. The works. Handled it all professionally.
One day John and his partner get this nothing call. Kid fell off his bike and scraped his knee. John's partner puts a bandaid on the kid, looks around and John is gone. They find John sitting on a curb a block away bawling his eyes out. That kid with the skinned knee was John's breaking point. He was done.
This is just a danger in the medical profession, but especially for first responder or trauma focused parts.
My BIL is a pretty highly credentialed RN. He was seriously considering quitting a few years ago and was asking me about software dev or IT as a career path. I didn't ask for any stories as that would be disrespectful & insensitive, but he was working in the NICU (intensive care unit for infants) and had transferred in from the ICU.
Medicine is clearly his calling, but even as an outsider I can understand how emotionally draining it would be to have to struggle (and sometimes lose) to save children's lives and then go home to your young family. It's tough to see death and suffering daily, and this is a big struggle for these parts of the medical field.
My BIL ended up transferring to a specialist organ transplant unit. He continues to apply his trauma experience, but doesn't need to see quite as much trauma and death on a daily basis.
Suicide & self-harm/addiction issues are higher, and it's not uncommon at all for people to need to leave the field after a traumatic event. If you aren't in the field or don't know anyone who is, it's easy to gloss over how soul-wrenchingly difficult it is to deal with having to be calm and professional to help people going through trauma. Some of the stuff these folks need to deal with is truly horrific, and it's no wonder that PTSD is fairly common.
Also not surprising that EMS has a bit of a fratty/military culture. The job demands high periods of physical exertion and exposure to stressful and traumatic experiences. I'm glad there are people who do this work, but I very much understand why it is difficult.
This is where the volunteer EMT system of my rural hometown is superior to city EMTs.
Effectively people are on call. A radio is passed around amongst the volunteers and it's pretty open (most of my family have been EMTs at one point, and for decades).
Because it's rural, there's not a whole lot of cases needing EMTs, but they do occur. And because there's a rotating schedule and it's not anyone's full time job, it's really easy to say "not to day" or "I need a month".
I don't know how you can translate this into professional EMTs for a city. The best I got is hiring more EMTs and offering more flexible and lenient time off.
As with many jobs, more people should probably be doing it, less. Everyone's an EMT, everyone's a cashier, everyone flips burgers, everyone teaches, everyone keeps the servers running - at least, for a little while.
Also solves a lot of problems with (long-term) unemployment.
It also helps a bit with a lot of other issues with labor. I'm taking a break from using a backhoe to finish installing my cistern, and running that equipment for a couple of days has been fun and easy. Since the rental co is coming to pick up the machine soon I am okay pushing my body a little bit to get the work done.
I think after a couple of weeks I'd probably get pretty good at it, but between the pay and the repetition that work would be pretty annoying and if I had to do this much work every day plus overtime I think it might put the hurt on me. But once a month, that's interesting. It's just really hard to find folks who don't want all my waking hours once I agree to do a little bit of work for them.
I think this is often where the black humor tend to come into play. But black humor and political correctness are like oil and water, so I imagine it creates an extremely uncomfortable work environment for some people on both sides. Somebody who's PC is probably going to find everybody else beastial, and somebody who's not is probably going to be terrified of the PC types going to HR, social media, or whatever else. This nuance immediately came to mind when this article described the EMTs as fratty, which is probably exactly how this might seem to an outsider who doesn't understand how people can cope with being around extremely depressing scenarios constantly.
I have family in medicine and there were just endless stories that would have had social media in a frenzy if anybody ever shared them. At some point you have to laugh or cry, and one is way more sustainable than the other.
Personally, I think this is one reason The Pitt has been so popular.
It shows the grindstone that is never-ending work + being disrespected by a chunk of the public for doing a good thing + dealing with insurance/financials + personal trauma.
The way that EMTs/PMs and ED staff find a way to make that pressure cooker sustainable shouldn't need any excuses for not being PC. It simply is making an impossible thing possible. Normal folks have the luxury of not dealing with that.
Wow dismissive... it is true but seems like some outsider doesn't understand the experience and what it takes to hang with them.
I have trouble dealing with EMTs and firefighters. They come off as officious and pushy. They are there to do a thing and duty calls them, and I usually represent a waste of time and effort for them. Yet, they saved my building when someone set fire to it 6.5 years ago. Yes, two weeks into the pandemic lockdown, I was nearly displaced by a huge fire. Officious and pushy tough guys/gals made sure I still had a place to live, and they even kept my electricity on.
Last Tuesday I visited the Police Museum, and I owe another visit to the Hall of Flame firefighting museum. I'm really trying to cultivate a respect for first responders, because they are in my family and in my community.
What first responders really face every day is hostile war-zones in an urban jungle. They go into places where people hate ICE, where assholes are filming and recording and Facebooking them; they go into places where people would rather start fires and put lead into bodies than take them out. They deal with victims who are combative and families who are uncooperative. They deal with uncertainty and chaos and every possible obstacle in their way. Literally, because I was riding a Waymo two weeks ago when it was the only vehicle on a 6-lane stroad to pull over and stop for lights & sirens screaming past! (It also pulled the same stunt for a school bus with flashing lights.)
If you've seen/read The Hunger Games through its conclusion, you may get the journey of Prim after her mother, and how the cruelty of life claimed her as a victim in the end, after all that Katniss had tried to do. Primrose Everdeen is the quintessential paramedic whose mind, family and very life is ruined by her compassionate, merciful vocation.
Sorry to say but that part about the waymo being the only car pulling over is the embodiment of "f*ck you, I got mine". I could never live in a society like that. Germany has many issues (or at least, its adversaries like to portray it as such), but the moment traffic stops on the Autobahn, cars split into forming a corridor immediately. And yes, the fact German society is, broadly speaking, very considerate of others, makes it a better place to live there, overall, despite lower income.
Neither can I live in a society like this, but currently it is more difficult to die than live, thanks to f*cking EMTs and hospitals...
Seriously though, there seem to be many considerate people out in traffic, and oftentimes I am the rudest one on the road, for whatever reason. I do not drive, but I find that queueing up and boarding the bus all the time, that people are generally real polite one-on-one, but also extraordinarily inconsiderate to the collective, insofar as flouting rules and breaching etiquette in crazy ways all the time. And the same goes for my neighbors around here, who seem to go out of their way to irritate others, and oftentimes I snap.
Perhaps it is an artifact or side-effect of DEI, multiculturalism, melting-pot mentality, in the big city, that really there is no common culture or common manners to any of us, and mostly people are out for their own interests. It is extremely common in American cities for road-rage escalations to violence and death. Surely the news outlets cannot even report the accidents and fatalities from people simply losing their temper whilst operating motor vehicles. And we're back to the EMT grind.
I believe that a lot of people accused of xenophobia, or hating immigrants, are actually frustrated by a loss of culture, or a dilution, and the inexorable pressure to cope with increasing diversity of cultures around us, which is simply inhuman and unworkable, IMHO. You can't solve it by mass-deporting or any human strategy. But people who share heritage and share common values are more likely to get along daily, than a crucible of ethnicities, tribes, and subcultures, that are all asserting their supremacy or dominance over one another.
It doesn't even have to be one thing, can just be the combined weight. As easily "compassion fatigue" as a big call.
I always thought it odd that people asked what the worst calls I've been on were - like "tell me about an unpleasant experience". But the thing that most people don't consider is that they assume it will be a gnarly trauma call. TBH, for me anyway, when it comes down to it, we're just blood and tissue, and in some ways you can, and have to, just 'disconnect' from that.
The worst calls are the emotionally damaging ones: SA/CSA, elder abuse, domestic violence, tragic accidents, the like. Those add up.
A department in my County has two fulltime therapists on staff.
whartung · · focus · HN ↗
The work seemed to suit him, he enjoyed it. I'd hang out with him at his base of operations (he was a private paramedic in LA County).
Then, one day, he quit.
He quit, and didn't renew his certification.
And he won't talk about it, and, boy, yea, did he have some stories.
But something got to him.
[deleted] · · focus · HN ↗
[deleted]
ctchocula · · focus · HN ↗
whartung · · focus · HN ↗
There was one "gallows humor" story of an obviously fatal bicycle accident. As paramedics, they could not declare the victim dead. They had to have authorization from the hospital.
The hospital insisted they send the EKG data back.
They said "Ok", and rather than going through the effort of connecting up the victim, they just stuck the leads to the truck and said "here it comes".
Then they got the OK to declare there at the scene.
p1anecrazy · · focus · HN ↗
Rastonbury · · focus · HN ↗
p1anecrazy · · focus · HN ↗
scarecrowbob · · focus · HN ↗
Still (and this is a general opinion unrelated to any judgement about the OP's story, which I don't hold any opinion on), finding a pulse can be hard for a lot of folks in a lot of situations.
I'm pretty okay with, say, 20-year-old EMT-Bs needing a bit more bureaucracy before they declare me dead. It takes about 90 seconds to place a 4-lead, no shade on those kiddos.
dreamcompiler · · focus · HN ↗
One I'll call John. He was a fantastic medic. Calm and reassuring in the toughest situations, and he was a great teacher of new EMTs. He had seen everything. Farming accidents (they're terrible), DRTs, MVAs, MCIs, child abuse. The works. Handled it all professionally.
One day John and his partner get this nothing call. Kid fell off his bike and scraped his knee. John's partner puts a bandaid on the kid, looks around and John is gone. They find John sitting on a curb a block away bawling his eyes out. That kid with the skinned knee was John's breaking point. He was done.
motionlessveloc · · focus · HN ↗
dreamcompiler · · focus · HN ↗
zrobotics · · focus · HN ↗
My BIL is a pretty highly credentialed RN. He was seriously considering quitting a few years ago and was asking me about software dev or IT as a career path. I didn't ask for any stories as that would be disrespectful & insensitive, but he was working in the NICU (intensive care unit for infants) and had transferred in from the ICU.
Medicine is clearly his calling, but even as an outsider I can understand how emotionally draining it would be to have to struggle (and sometimes lose) to save children's lives and then go home to your young family. It's tough to see death and suffering daily, and this is a big struggle for these parts of the medical field.
My BIL ended up transferring to a specialist organ transplant unit. He continues to apply his trauma experience, but doesn't need to see quite as much trauma and death on a daily basis.
Suicide & self-harm/addiction issues are higher, and it's not uncommon at all for people to need to leave the field after a traumatic event. If you aren't in the field or don't know anyone who is, it's easy to gloss over how soul-wrenchingly difficult it is to deal with having to be calm and professional to help people going through trauma. Some of the stuff these folks need to deal with is truly horrific, and it's no wonder that PTSD is fairly common.
Also not surprising that EMS has a bit of a fratty/military culture. The job demands high periods of physical exertion and exposure to stressful and traumatic experiences. I'm glad there are people who do this work, but I very much understand why it is difficult.
cogman10 · · focus · HN ↗
Effectively people are on call. A radio is passed around amongst the volunteers and it's pretty open (most of my family have been EMTs at one point, and for decades).
Because it's rural, there's not a whole lot of cases needing EMTs, but they do occur. And because there's a rotating schedule and it's not anyone's full time job, it's really easy to say "not to day" or "I need a month".
I don't know how you can translate this into professional EMTs for a city. The best I got is hiring more EMTs and offering more flexible and lenient time off.
59percentmore · · focus · HN ↗
Also solves a lot of problems with (long-term) unemployment.
scarecrowbob · · focus · HN ↗
I think after a couple of weeks I'd probably get pretty good at it, but between the pay and the repetition that work would be pretty annoying and if I had to do this much work every day plus overtime I think it might put the hurt on me. But once a month, that's interesting. It's just really hard to find folks who don't want all my waking hours once I agree to do a little bit of work for them.
somenameforme · · focus · HN ↗
I have family in medicine and there were just endless stories that would have had social media in a frenzy if anybody ever shared them. At some point you have to laugh or cry, and one is way more sustainable than the other.
ethbr1 · · focus · HN ↗
It shows the grindstone that is never-ending work + being disrespected by a chunk of the public for doing a good thing + dealing with insurance/financials + personal trauma.
The way that EMTs/PMs and ED staff find a way to make that pressure cooker sustainable shouldn't need any excuses for not being PC. It simply is making an impossible thing possible. Normal folks have the luxury of not dealing with that.
ButlerianJihad · · focus · HN ↗
Wow dismissive... it is true but seems like some outsider doesn't understand the experience and what it takes to hang with them.
I have trouble dealing with EMTs and firefighters. They come off as officious and pushy. They are there to do a thing and duty calls them, and I usually represent a waste of time and effort for them. Yet, they saved my building when someone set fire to it 6.5 years ago. Yes, two weeks into the pandemic lockdown, I was nearly displaced by a huge fire. Officious and pushy tough guys/gals made sure I still had a place to live, and they even kept my electricity on.
Last Tuesday I visited the Police Museum, and I owe another visit to the Hall of Flame firefighting museum. I'm really trying to cultivate a respect for first responders, because they are in my family and in my community.
What first responders really face every day is hostile war-zones in an urban jungle. They go into places where people hate ICE, where assholes are filming and recording and Facebooking them; they go into places where people would rather start fires and put lead into bodies than take them out. They deal with victims who are combative and families who are uncooperative. They deal with uncertainty and chaos and every possible obstacle in their way. Literally, because I was riding a Waymo two weeks ago when it was the only vehicle on a 6-lane stroad to pull over and stop for lights & sirens screaming past! (It also pulled the same stunt for a school bus with flashing lights.)
If you've seen/read The Hunger Games through its conclusion, you may get the journey of Prim after her mother, and how the cruelty of life claimed her as a victim in the end, after all that Katniss had tried to do. Primrose Everdeen is the quintessential paramedic whose mind, family and very life is ruined by her compassionate, merciful vocation.
ricardobayes · · focus · HN ↗
ButlerianJihad · · focus · HN ↗
Seriously though, there seem to be many considerate people out in traffic, and oftentimes I am the rudest one on the road, for whatever reason. I do not drive, but I find that queueing up and boarding the bus all the time, that people are generally real polite one-on-one, but also extraordinarily inconsiderate to the collective, insofar as flouting rules and breaching etiquette in crazy ways all the time. And the same goes for my neighbors around here, who seem to go out of their way to irritate others, and oftentimes I snap.
Perhaps it is an artifact or side-effect of DEI, multiculturalism, melting-pot mentality, in the big city, that really there is no common culture or common manners to any of us, and mostly people are out for their own interests. It is extremely common in American cities for road-rage escalations to violence and death. Surely the news outlets cannot even report the accidents and fatalities from people simply losing their temper whilst operating motor vehicles. And we're back to the EMT grind.
I believe that a lot of people accused of xenophobia, or hating immigrants, are actually frustrated by a loss of culture, or a dilution, and the inexorable pressure to cope with increasing diversity of cultures around us, which is simply inhuman and unworkable, IMHO. You can't solve it by mass-deporting or any human strategy. But people who share heritage and share common values are more likely to get along daily, than a crucible of ethnicities, tribes, and subcultures, that are all asserting their supremacy or dominance over one another.
teacpde · · focus · HN ↗
FireBeyond · · focus · HN ↗
I always thought it odd that people asked what the worst calls I've been on were - like "tell me about an unpleasant experience". But the thing that most people don't consider is that they assume it will be a gnarly trauma call. TBH, for me anyway, when it comes down to it, we're just blood and tissue, and in some ways you can, and have to, just 'disconnect' from that.
The worst calls are the emotionally damaging ones: SA/CSA, elder abuse, domestic violence, tragic accidents, the like. Those add up.
A department in my County has two fulltime therapists on staff.