Wednesday, 31 December 2008

• My New Year's wish for EMS

  A lot of people don't realize the things EMS professionals deal with on a regular basis.  Depending on where you work and who you work for...it varies from people being extremely rude...or threatening you...or calling 911 for things such as "my toe hurts" or "I just feel bad (but I'm lying and really just plan on walking down the street when we get to the hospital cause I just need a ride)"....and if you work for a privately owned service you get to wait hours and hours at doctors offices, go on really long out of state transports in the middle of the night when you've only had about 2 hours of sleep (and that's if you were lucky lol)...

  And the truth is no matter how much we love our jobs, from time to time we all get a little burnt out, tired, frustrated, annoyed, whatever you want to call it.

  I remember a few months ago my company sent a crew to take a patient from a local hospital to one in Pittsburgh.  Thats an extremely long trip and only one of the crew members was allowed to drive under our insurance...so they decided to send me with them so the driver and I could take turns driving...

  I was frustrated as hell.  We had been busy all day.  It was 1:00 am and I hadn't slept yet.  I was supposed to get off duty at 7:30 am...but I knew on a trip like this that wasn't going to happen.  (We actually didn't get back to our station till about 4:00 pm.)

  Now don't get me wrong.  I love my job...and I care about my patients.  I would never be mean to my patients or take my frustrations out on them.  I understand that they're sick.  It's not their fault.  But despite how I looked and acted on the outside, I was really annoyed about having to go to freakin' Pittsburgh...but this was a cancer patient and from what the doctor had told us, they were still fighting it, but she didn't have much longer.  But of course, I wasn't thinking about that...

  But then we stopped to get some fuel...so our patient's daughter who was driving in her car behind us came over to talk to her mom.  I wasn't paying much attention to what they were saying.  But I could tell the daughter was trying really hard to stay upbeat...but then she suddenly turned her face to the side and kind of stood halfway behind the ambulance door.  It was dark but I could still see that she was trying not to cry.  That's when it hit me.

  Needless to say, I felt like crap about how I had been feeling earlier.  I mean, boo hoo, poor, healthy little me...having to be up all night....with a cancer patient that is dying.  Poor little me, right??

  The truth is that no one gets into EMS to take people to the doctor or go on really long interfacility transports...we get into it for the excitement, the challenge...the opportunity to give it all we've got and save someone's life.  But no matter what you're doing, regardless of whether it's the exciting gun shot wound or taking someone to dialysis...we are helping people.  And if you've been in EMS for a while (even after dealing with all the long hours, lack of sleep, rude people, being threatened, breaking your back, lack of food, etc., etc.) then chances are there is a reason for it.  And that reason is probably because you have an inherent desire and ability to help people in their time of need...

  So my EMS wish for the New Year is that whenever everyone is feeling frustrated, burnt out, etc. there won't be any shortage of these moments that make you snap back to reality and realize that this isn't "just a patient".  This is someone's mother, daughter, friend, lover, coworker...this is a person that for whatever reason, needs your help.

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