A (dis)Credit to the Profession

The only thing that keeps him consigned to the Reciprocal Blogroll is, oddly enough, his reticence in reciprocating a little linky love. I keep scanning his sidebar every day after reading his posts, hoping to find my name there on his blogroll.

Ambulancemen laughed and bantered as they fought to save the life of a heart-attack patient, putting a prawn on his chin and joking over whether it would be fried by the defibrilator, an employment tribunal was told this week.

Apparently, two UK medics got sacked for engaging in a little black humor at an inappropriate time and place. At least, it may have seemed inappropriate to the other medic who turned them in. Keep in mind that the only witnesses to their shenanigans were the other medics and the patient, who was in full cardiopulmonary arrest.

You regular readers know my feelings on this subject. As to whether these two medics were behaving inappropriately or the medic who turned them in needs the enormous stick pulled from his ass, I’ll reserve judgment for now. I don’t know all the facts.

Please note that I’m not advocating some tired, lame code of silence – “what happens on the rig stays on the rig” – either. Inappropriate behavior should be reported and punished. I’m just not sure what they did was all that inappropriate. In poor taste, maybe, but that’s the nature of humor of any stripe. Not everyone gets it.

I have a big mouth and a faulty internal censor. Profanity and I are well acquainted. My mouth has gotten me in trouble more than once, and I have been known to say some outrageous things.

But I am entering my fifteenth year in EMS, and in that time I have never gotten a complaint from a patient about my behavior.

Not a single one.

Six health care professionals over the years have seen fit to report me to my supervisors for some perceived slight or breach of etiquette, but in all those cases, the patient took no offense at my behavior.

And in retrospect, a few of those complaints were probably warranted. We’re not always on our best behavior, even when we try.

So the point is, I can commiserate with these UK medics. Not every joke scores a laugh, and some may unintentionally offend, and some times we say things we wish we could take back.

But what these medics did across the pond in the UK pales in comparison to this 100% Murkin discredit to EMS. It is to these *spit* “medics” that I address the following statement:

Get. Out. Of. My. Profession.

EMS neither wants you, nor needs you. Take your disrespectful, misogynistic, incompassionate, racist brethren with you. All your buddies who considered you to be “stand up guys” need to re-evaluate their own standards.

Tomorrow marks the end of EMS week in the United States. For the past six days, EMTs at agencies all across the country have been striving to portray our profession in a positive light. We have a seven-day window to raise some awareness of the critical issues EMS is facing. Seven days to make our case to Joe Sixpack, Suzy Soccermom, and Snidely Politician before we are once again relegated to the background, a health care afterthought until Joe, Suzy or Snidely happen to need an ambulance.

And for all our efforts to portray EMS in a positive light, we see crap like this far too often. It’s enough to make your head explode.

A few years back, I was at a major EMS convention in Nashville. During one evening’s entertainment, I caught a few snippets of a conversation at the table behind me. After a while, it became apparent that two of the EMTs behind us were party to a scandal that had recently rocked a major metropolitan Fire/EMS department. Drinking at station houses, strippers, sexual harassment of female department members…pretty sordid stuff, and it had made the rounds of the trade magazines, national news media and internet discussion lists.

And these two bozos were bragging of their part in it, and the fact that they had escaped punishment while their supervisors took most of the heat. To make matters worse, they had an appreciative audience.

Pardner and I listened to all of this we could, quietly finished our beers and left. It was either that, or lose our tempers and assault a table full of asshats. Their behavior had already tainted EMS in one city, and the last thing the profession needed was a news story of six medics involved in a bar brawl at the Wild Horse Saloon.

Plus, they were four fairly beefy firefighters. I’m not sure Pardner and I could have taken them.

The next day, I had the distinct pleasure of watching Pardner receive a national award for his accomplishments as an EMT. As I watched him there on the podium giving everyone else credit for his accomplishments – his Dad, his bosses, me, his patients – I was struck by the thought that this is what a credit to the profession looks like.

Definitely not buff. More like approaching middle age and getting lumpy.

Nor was he well dressed. If I hadn’t taken him at gunpoint to a haberdashery, he’d have been wearing Wranglers with a Copenhagen ring in the back pocket.

Not especially well-groomed either. His beard could have used a trim. His hair was a little long, but his Stetson hid it well.

He wasn’t all that well-spoken. He cleared his throat a lot. He stammered a bit. You could tell he was nervous.

The check he got with the award was going to be spent at Bass Pro Shops for Christmas presents for his kids. It had to, because the yearly salary he made still qualified his family for food stamps. He was poor.

But when he told a ballroom full of people, “I consider myself lucky to do what I do for a living. Most people never have the opportunity to find their purpose, but I have found what God put me on this earth to do,” you believed him.

Somehow, an apology for pushing over a homeless person just doesn’t ring as true, no matter how penitent-looking the transgressor, or how sharp his creases.