This article speaks to me. My mother is a paramedic and my stepdad was a volunteer firefighter. My father is a police officer. I worked as an EMT and then transitioned into 911 Dispatch. My...
Exemplary
This article speaks to me.
My mother is a paramedic and my stepdad was a volunteer firefighter. My father is a police officer. I worked as an EMT and then transitioned into 911 Dispatch. My brother is a firefighter/EMT for a neighboring city and the same one my dad works for. Public service is a family tradition, at this point.
Being a first responder is exhilarating, rewarding, and a total beat down. Mentally, physically, and emotionally. The feeling of getting a pulse back or someone waking up, knowing you made a difference, knowing you kept them alive long enough for the doctor to his job.
But it's draining. Especially in the US. I don't know how BC or other places around the world do it but in the US, EMS is divided between Private ambulance services and city services, like fire departments. Private EMS sucks to work for. You're typically a glorified taxi, shuttling patients from nursing home to doctor appointment or dialysis for 10 bucks an hour. Every company is different but for the company I worked for, shifts were 8hrs, 12hrs, 15hrs, or 24hrs long. We worked out of run down buildings that were barely up to code, shitty air conditioning, which sucks balls in Texas during the summer. Our ambulances were barely in working order, regularly breaking down, AC not working etc....the first ambulance I worked on had an electrical short in the back end that kept the lights in the back from ever working. So you couldn't see the ambulance from behind unless the lights in the cab were on. My shift was a 15 hr, from 4am-7pm. But it was never 15 hrs. It was almost always 16 or 17. See, dispatch had a mandate that calls couldn't hold. If you had available trucks, you sent them regardless of what time they were supposed to be off. So instead of heading at 7pm so I could go home and get a decent night sleep, I'm getting dispatched to another call, not getting off until 8pm or 9pm, By the time I'm getting home, it's 10pm. So I'm getting MAAAYBE 5 hours of sleep before having to get up and do it all over again.
The breaking point, at least for that shift, was when I fell asleep at the wheel while transporting a patient. At least I think I fell asleep. It was one of those moments where you were driving and went from Point A to Point B but had zero recollection of how you got there. We didn't crash or anything but it was a wake up call.
I immediately sent an email to the lady who did truck shifts and assignments and told her that, unless Dispatch was mandated not to send us on late calls, I wanted off that shift. That I had inadvertently endangered the lives of my patient, my partner, and myself because I wasn't getting enough sleep. And if she didn't reassign me, I was going to the owner of the company to lodge a complaint against her, dispatch, and our supervisors who didn't make any effort to address the concerns. I certainly wasn't the only one they fucked over on a consistent basis. It was company wide. But I couldn't do it anymore. I loved the work but I refused to work that shift anymore. I wasn't going to endanger my partners or patients because the company was prioritizing profit over patients.
And the thing is, the work environment is in addition to the things you see. Someone taking their last breaths. The sad, slow decline of an Alzheimers patient that you've known for awhile....where, once, they knew your name, asked you how you were doing, and eventually, no longer recognize you, can't tell you anything about themselves. Until one day you show up and their room is empty.
Now, as a 911 dispatcher, I hear it differently than I saw it. Now I hear a wife screaming and crying as her husband of 30 years collapsed and isn't breathing. On one hand, you're angry because it's like "get your shit together and maybe we can save him" but at the same time, you do this long enough, and you just know this woman is going to burying her husband. A young mother is panicked and crying because her 2 year old just fell off the couch and hit their head on a tile floor. I literally just answered a call about someone brandishing a gun to a bunch of kids because apparently someone had stolen from them and the kids looked suspicious......Didn't actually see them doing anything. They just looked like they might.
You'd be surprised how racist your neighbors are. I can't tell you how many calls we take, that we HAVE to send on, that boil down to a black man walking down the street or sitting in his car. It's insane.
I once had a lady call in asking how old her kids needed to be so she could drop them off at the fire department and not get in trouble for it. She straight up wanted to abandon her kids.
I remember watching one of my partners, someone who has been dispatching for 20 years, break down and cry her eyes out over an 8 year old girl that drowned. My partner tried to give CPR instructions but the person on the phone wouldn't listen.....then I watched the police officer who responded, a military veteran and 20 year officer, cry his eyes out over a little girl he couldn't save, that from what I could tell, and what the responders told me, no one was going to save. It wasn't water that killed the girl. I mean, yea, she drowned, but neglect was the primary problem. She drowned at a party. Over two dozen parents and other kids running around but no one paid enough attention to see this girl go under the water.
Anyone who works as a first responder has stories like this. Stuff we'd rather forget but we can't. And we know we shouldn't. We need these stories. It keeps us grounded. It keeps us focused It reminds us that not every call will have a happy ending but we do everything we can because we'd want the same for our loved ones.
To an extent, you're not wrong. Empathy certainly makes it hurt more when you see/hear something tragic. But we need it to keep us focused. Lose too much of your emotion and empathy and each...
To an extent, you're not wrong. Empathy certainly makes it hurt more when you see/hear something tragic. But we need it to keep us focused. Lose too much of your emotion and empathy and each patient/caller isn't getting your absolute best because you're simply not emotionally invested. Your patients and callers can tell when you don't care and they don't respond as well to you in that situation
That seems an incredibly broad and overly generalized statement... and FYI, "psychopath" isn't the proper diagnosis or terminology to use anymore. Antisocial personality disorder (in the DSM) and...
That seems an incredibly broad and overly generalized statement... and FYI, "psychopath" isn't the proper diagnosis or terminology to use anymore.
Antisocial personality disorder (in the DSM) and Dissocial personality disorder (in the ICD) are, and while they include elements of what used to be generally referred to as psychopathy and sociopathy, they are much more specific. Comorbidity is also be a factor to consider too, e.g. A person with APD/DPD may also have Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Bipolar disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive disorder, etc. But not all of them do.
I wouldn't call it a weakness but it makes the job A LOT harder for you. I was a 911 dispatcher for 2 years and some change ( moved out of state and got back into IT ) and they told us on the...
I wouldn't call it a weakness but it makes the job A LOT harder for you.
I was a 911 dispatcher for 2 years and some change ( moved out of state and got back into IT ) and they told us on the first day of training if death, dismemberment, and people loosing their shit bothered you to walk out now.
This was an interesting article. I think one thing that is understated in the article is people REALLY underestimate how much seeing someone die in a traumatic way will FUCK. YOU. UP. If I was...
This was an interesting article. I think one thing that is understated in the article is people REALLY underestimate how much seeing someone die in a traumatic way will FUCK. YOU. UP. If I was guessing, I would guess it is a mix of not seeing anything like that first-hand and media really minimizing how much seeing dead people will fuck you up mentally. For the most part in tv/movies, it really only bothers a person for like a week tops and then they move on and are fine (unless they are doing the PTSD arch, in which case it will heavily affect one character for a while and then they'll get better and not be affected again).
I would also tack on the sort of gore voyeurism that has been enabled by the internet. I've seen so much terrible stuff on the internet that I'm desensitized to it in this context, but would...
I would guess it is a mix of not seeing anything like that first-hand and media really minimizing how much seeing dead people will fuck you up mentally.
I would also tack on the sort of gore voyeurism that has been enabled by the internet. I've seen so much terrible stuff on the internet that I'm desensitized to it in this context, but would probably, hopefully, be destroyed if I saw the mild stuff happen in real life (this is the sort of thing I don't want to be okay seeing in real life).
This article speaks to me.
My mother is a paramedic and my stepdad was a volunteer firefighter. My father is a police officer. I worked as an EMT and then transitioned into 911 Dispatch. My brother is a firefighter/EMT for a neighboring city and the same one my dad works for. Public service is a family tradition, at this point.
Being a first responder is exhilarating, rewarding, and a total beat down. Mentally, physically, and emotionally. The feeling of getting a pulse back or someone waking up, knowing you made a difference, knowing you kept them alive long enough for the doctor to his job.
But it's draining. Especially in the US. I don't know how BC or other places around the world do it but in the US, EMS is divided between Private ambulance services and city services, like fire departments. Private EMS sucks to work for. You're typically a glorified taxi, shuttling patients from nursing home to doctor appointment or dialysis for 10 bucks an hour. Every company is different but for the company I worked for, shifts were 8hrs, 12hrs, 15hrs, or 24hrs long. We worked out of run down buildings that were barely up to code, shitty air conditioning, which sucks balls in Texas during the summer. Our ambulances were barely in working order, regularly breaking down, AC not working etc....the first ambulance I worked on had an electrical short in the back end that kept the lights in the back from ever working. So you couldn't see the ambulance from behind unless the lights in the cab were on. My shift was a 15 hr, from 4am-7pm. But it was never 15 hrs. It was almost always 16 or 17. See, dispatch had a mandate that calls couldn't hold. If you had available trucks, you sent them regardless of what time they were supposed to be off. So instead of heading at 7pm so I could go home and get a decent night sleep, I'm getting dispatched to another call, not getting off until 8pm or 9pm, By the time I'm getting home, it's 10pm. So I'm getting MAAAYBE 5 hours of sleep before having to get up and do it all over again.
The breaking point, at least for that shift, was when I fell asleep at the wheel while transporting a patient. At least I think I fell asleep. It was one of those moments where you were driving and went from Point A to Point B but had zero recollection of how you got there. We didn't crash or anything but it was a wake up call.
I immediately sent an email to the lady who did truck shifts and assignments and told her that, unless Dispatch was mandated not to send us on late calls, I wanted off that shift. That I had inadvertently endangered the lives of my patient, my partner, and myself because I wasn't getting enough sleep. And if she didn't reassign me, I was going to the owner of the company to lodge a complaint against her, dispatch, and our supervisors who didn't make any effort to address the concerns. I certainly wasn't the only one they fucked over on a consistent basis. It was company wide. But I couldn't do it anymore. I loved the work but I refused to work that shift anymore. I wasn't going to endanger my partners or patients because the company was prioritizing profit over patients.
And the thing is, the work environment is in addition to the things you see. Someone taking their last breaths. The sad, slow decline of an Alzheimers patient that you've known for awhile....where, once, they knew your name, asked you how you were doing, and eventually, no longer recognize you, can't tell you anything about themselves. Until one day you show up and their room is empty.
Now, as a 911 dispatcher, I hear it differently than I saw it. Now I hear a wife screaming and crying as her husband of 30 years collapsed and isn't breathing. On one hand, you're angry because it's like "get your shit together and maybe we can save him" but at the same time, you do this long enough, and you just know this woman is going to burying her husband. A young mother is panicked and crying because her 2 year old just fell off the couch and hit their head on a tile floor. I literally just answered a call about someone brandishing a gun to a bunch of kids because apparently someone had stolen from them and the kids looked suspicious......Didn't actually see them doing anything. They just looked like they might.
You'd be surprised how racist your neighbors are. I can't tell you how many calls we take, that we HAVE to send on, that boil down to a black man walking down the street or sitting in his car. It's insane.
I once had a lady call in asking how old her kids needed to be so she could drop them off at the fire department and not get in trouble for it. She straight up wanted to abandon her kids.
I remember watching one of my partners, someone who has been dispatching for 20 years, break down and cry her eyes out over an 8 year old girl that drowned. My partner tried to give CPR instructions but the person on the phone wouldn't listen.....then I watched the police officer who responded, a military veteran and 20 year officer, cry his eyes out over a little girl he couldn't save, that from what I could tell, and what the responders told me, no one was going to save. It wasn't water that killed the girl. I mean, yea, she drowned, but neglect was the primary problem. She drowned at a party. Over two dozen parents and other kids running around but no one paid enough attention to see this girl go under the water.
Anyone who works as a first responder has stories like this. Stuff we'd rather forget but we can't. And we know we shouldn't. We need these stories. It keeps us grounded. It keeps us focused It reminds us that not every call will have a happy ending but we do everything we can because we'd want the same for our loved ones.
To an extent, you're not wrong. Empathy certainly makes it hurt more when you see/hear something tragic. But we need it to keep us focused. Lose too much of your emotion and empathy and each patient/caller isn't getting your absolute best because you're simply not emotionally invested. Your patients and callers can tell when you don't care and they don't respond as well to you in that situation
That seems an incredibly broad and overly generalized statement... and FYI, "psychopath" isn't the proper diagnosis or terminology to use anymore.
Antisocial personality disorder (in the DSM) and Dissocial personality disorder (in the ICD) are, and while they include elements of what used to be generally referred to as psychopathy and sociopathy, they are much more specific. Comorbidity is also be a factor to consider too, e.g. A person with APD/DPD may also have Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Bipolar disorder, Obsessive-Compulsive disorder, etc. But not all of them do.
I wouldn't call it a weakness but it makes the job A LOT harder for you.
I was a 911 dispatcher for 2 years and some change ( moved out of state and got back into IT ) and they told us on the first day of training if death, dismemberment, and people loosing their shit bothered you to walk out now.
This was an interesting article. I think one thing that is understated in the article is people REALLY underestimate how much seeing someone die in a traumatic way will FUCK. YOU. UP. If I was guessing, I would guess it is a mix of not seeing anything like that first-hand and media really minimizing how much seeing dead people will fuck you up mentally. For the most part in tv/movies, it really only bothers a person for like a week tops and then they move on and are fine (unless they are doing the PTSD arch, in which case it will heavily affect one character for a while and then they'll get better and not be affected again).
I would also tack on the sort of gore voyeurism that has been enabled by the internet. I've seen so much terrible stuff on the internet that I'm desensitized to it in this context, but would probably, hopefully, be destroyed if I saw the mild stuff happen in real life (this is the sort of thing I don't want to be okay seeing in real life).