People Care

We were given a book on the first day of work and they told us to read it. I finally sat down and read it yesterday. It's called "People Care" and it's basically about how people who have been in EMS after a number of years are calloused. They're harsh and they're (sometimes) mean. We meet people on the worst days of their lives and for EMS people to come in to their homes and be calloused is unacceptable.

A few things I learned....

• It's not intellectual power that will turn you into a top-notch EMT. It takes something more, you must love helping people. It's ALL about helping others, reaching out to them as friends and having them trust us to help them as much as we can on the worst days of their lives.
• What you (EMT's) do with your life is take care of people who are mostly poor, mostly anonymous and mostly uncared about by anyone at all. You will rarely get thanked when you deserve to be. And you'll never get rich. Aside from that, some people aren't very nice on the worst days of their lives. They cuss at you, they spit at you, they hit you and bite you and they say terrible things about your mom. However, you still have to be nice and tolerate them. It's part of the caregiver's job.
• Every EMT class should discuss the meaning of EMS in the following way:

The E in EMS stands for Emergency. Not ours, but someone elses. As a result, the emergencies we face will always be defined by their owners, and not by us.

The M in EMS stands for Medical. It doesn't stand for Me, and it has nothign to do with More Money for fire trucks, More political power or More public recognition. EMS is not just a public service, it is medicine. It needs to be driven by MDs and not MBAs.

The S in EMS stands for Service. It has nothing to do with self-esteem or any other kind of selfishness.

• Your responsibility on every call you handle is not to take care of the public. It's to come home safe to those who love you.
• Next time you are writing a patient care report, do yuor best to make sure it tells the whole story of your care. Then when you get to the part where you sign your name, imagine yourself standing in front of your patient, face-to-face and saying the following, "I did my very best for you."
• EMS will take everything you have to give, it will chew you up and spit you out, and then come up asking for more. The reason is simple. Nobody gets out of here alive. Everybody dies some day, not matter how good their paramedics are their EMTs are, and no matter how great their nurses and surgeons.
• When you find yourself in a position of responsibility for a really bad call, remind yourself of this: this is not your emergency. You're just there to help as much as you can, and sometimes what you can do to help will not be enough.
• Humility is an important tool for any caregiver. Ther came too that makes it possible to wash the feces off a stranger's body, or control your feelings after someone spits in your face, can keep your grounded in the fact that no matter how brilliant you are, you're only a helper.

There are a few more, but I think I'll dave those for later.

Hope you have a great weekend!