One of the things they don't always teach you in paramedic school is that true life threatening emergencies don't really happen all that often. (Relatively speaking. Looking at the entire population, they are extremely rare. Working as a paramedic means that you get called to life and death situations with something approaching regularity.) As a result, the majority of patients we wind up transporting either don't need any particular care on the way to the hospital, or require something simple that doesn't take up a lot of time. That's fine with me, even though the paperwork is more or less the same regardless of how much I do en route, and as any of my partners can tell you, I tend to leave pretty much the same degree of mess in the back of the ambulance whether the patient is truly sick or not. (I'm getting to the point, I promise.) What all this actually means is that we can wind up with a LOT of time to kill while we're on the road. I'd even venture to say that most of the people we transport really don't need much more than a ride to the hospital with someone to keep an eye on them, just in case.
The end result of all this is that we wind up making a lot of small talk to keep the patient entertained, informed, and most importantly, DISTRACTED. Kids are easy. Being emotionally immature myself, I can relate to them. Bring up the finer points of Spongebob, start talking video games, and draw a face on an inflated glove, and you're golden. Keep them occupied until you get to the ER, and you're three quarters of the way to fixing them. Teens and adults, on the other hand.... Not so simple. They keep asking intelligent questions that demand real answers. Most of the time, they just want you to reassure them that everything's going to be OK, which it usually is. Sometimes you're worried about them, and you really need to be honest with them about that, too. They don't want to hear it, but the truth is your only option. Fortunately those folks are the minority, and a subject for another day.
The largest group is the not all that sick folks, and eventually they all ask the same question: "How can you do this every day?" Good question. So good, in fact, that even after doing this for years, I still can't answer it to my own satisfaction. I usually come back with something along the lines of "Well, they keep paying me, so I keep coming back." Most people are satisfied by that, even if it IS a cop-out. The truth is that most of us keep doing the job because we can't NOT do it. EMS has become what's termed an "ego investment profession". Put simply, the job becomes not just your job, but your identity. If you ask me what I do for a living, I'd never tell you "I work in EMS." I'm more likely to tell you "I am a paramedic." See? There's a difference. The job is psychologically addicting. Deep down every one of us in the field is an adrenaline junkie to a certain extent. We still get a rush when the call comes in, and it's still fun to go tearing through town with lights and sirens. It's a huge ego boost to show up on a scene and have your first responders tell a patient that everything's going to be all right now, the paramedics are here. It's exhilarating to watch someone that was nearly dead a couple minutes ago open their eyes and look at you with gratitude. I still get a kick out of having someone walk up to me in the gas station and tell me that I saved their life, or their spouse's, or child's life five years ago. I probably won't remember it, of course. Only the failures stick with you. But even if we can't save them, someone ALWAYS comes up and thanks us for trying. That's a good feeling, too.
So how do I do this job every day? Easy. I love it.
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