I’m a firefighter slash EMT I recently and recently I went on a call where a patient didn’t live not unusual by any means unfortunately I deal with loss of life on almost a daily basis I detach and do my job always working to get better this call I failed to detach it hit me hard when the patient’s husband let out a chilling let out chilling screams as his thirty year old wife went from alert in talking to dead within minutes I let myself enter into his shoes at that moment I got over it quick during my days off and moved on it’s part of the job and I accept that but my question is when does it become inhumane to detach do we sometimes need to let some weakness through to remain grounded when dealing with such major incidents as loss of life okay first of all sympathy and empathy are not weaknesses they’re not weaknesses in fact it actually takes strength to be able to deal with these types of the situations and these types of emotions the weak move would actually be to cut those emotions off completely so that being said as you know obviously there is a dichotomy because you cannot let the emotions overwhelm you as a matter of fact if you get overwhelmed by your feelings then you can’t do your job properly which in its own right is inhumane because now you’re not able to treat the patients that you’re trying to save because you’re getting too emotional about it so what do you have to do the answer for the for the millionth time of a different subject but comes up all times you’ve got to find balance you have to find balance between being emotional enough about not being too emotional you have to learn to recognize if you’re going too far in one direction or the other you have to do a self-assessment you have to look and see and make sure that the that you see the people you’re treating as people you have to look at them and make sure that you’re seeing them as people that you’re not seeing them as a hunk of meat right you have to do that you have to make sure that you’re doing that at the same time you cannot afford emotionally to go through the pain of loss every time you see someone die cuz that’s also gonna be a problem you can’t afford emotionally to do that you can’t go through that pain over and over and over again so you have to like you said you have to detach normally do a good job with that um I’ve seen guys get wounded I’ve seen guys get killed I’ve been around a lot of death and when when it was around me I didn’t have time to stop and think about it I had to work to do I had to detach myself and do my job at the same time when it’s over and that of time was appropriate it’s like you got to connect with what happened and make sure that you are dealing with it appropriately and you know I always thank firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and and police and military but you know paramedics and EMTs you’re only showing up if someone is in a bad way and I know that’s hard physically and it’s hard mentally and it’s hard emotionally so find a balance keep yourself balanced make sure you’re not going to form one direction or the other and thanks for doing your job man that’s like easy but sometimes you forget that about EMTs yeah fire friendly that’s the only time you know where they spray I mean pretty much yeah no getting called because someone is in a bad way that’s the whole thing what they’re showing up for man and you know cops too like like it’s easy to be on the outside when you’re going to parks and you know and if your job is like you know me I press record and make the or make videos or whatever you know and this is like every day so it kind of forms this kind of vision you know my world whatever but EMTs and every day everytime you get the call it’s just it’s just the question is just oh how bad yeah you know that’s what it is how bad how bad of a situation is the person I’m about to go content with what’s their situation yeah they are they could be everything from a minor situation to they’re going to die in front of me again again it’s a new person will and their life and their kids and their family and you know Peter Tia talked about some of that the becoming a bit jaded in fact it’s a pretty horrific story and it’s worth listening to that podcast when he was on and he talked about how he got to a point where some patients he started to look at I like Matt he’d be mad at them yeah mad at them and that’s what you have to avoid is getting to this point you got to you got to do your best to stay emotionally detached enough that you can do your job but at the same time you can’t be looking at other human beings as if they’re just a piece of meat yeah so hard job
My WordPress Blog