It's a feeling that is leaves you speechless and without words. Night after night of the same thing, the same stress, the same people, and the same nonsense. You hit the wall. You become overcome with this burden that takes all the wind out of your sails. It kills any motivation that you may have for anything.
This phenomenon is called burnout and it happens all to often to first responders all over the country. It's the constant day in and day out of seeing the same thing. It's a feeling where the job you do literally takes control of your mind and body.
Now while many are thinking that this is something that happens from seeing a great deal of horrific things is not true. That's PTSD. Burnout is when you fall into a slump from seeing the same thing.
Allow me to break out an example. Where I work my full time job, it is a busy urban system. We see our fair share of frequent flyers. Now from time to time they are good for a laugh and everyone yucks it up. But as the nights go on and you are writing charts on the same heroin addict, who walks all over the city until she runs out of places to hide and score her fix, that she now calls 911 asking for a ride to the hospital. She doesn't have a complaint, She just wants to go to the hospital and lay in a bed. She wants a bed because it's warm. She has no medical problem. She's a drug addict. She ignores her other problems so that she may get her fix again the next day. She thinks it's funny and cute to pull this every night. But what about that bed she's taking up? That bed that could've been used for your family member or your loved one. But no, she's there. And she will be there every night because she knows she gets a turkey sandwich. Or it's the nights of picking up the child with a fever. Or the person with a toothache.
Basic life support is certainly not a glory job, but nobody is willing to admit that they are the red headed step children of the medical system. The emt's are the grunts. They do the dirty work. They don't push drugs and they don't perform ekgs. They carry people and drive others from point a to the hospital. We are trained in basic life support which is exactly that, basic skills. They also master the skill of ambulance driver. Now it's not to say that I don't know some brilliant emts. I am a firm believer that you are only as good of a responder as you train to be.
Where I work there is a sink or swim mentality. You will either know how to be a great EMT or your life will be hell for the extent you work at this job. I say job because it is impossible to make a career out of being an EMT. Working here you will know your protocols inside and out. You will know what patients will and will not benefit from advanced life support. You know this because you have to. There is no hand holding, there is no baby steps. You are thrown to the sharks and you better start kicking.
The things I have seen will soon be trumped by a volunteer with 25 bullshit calls under their belt who has it all figured out. I personally enjoy hearing new emts (and sometimes kids who aren't even emts) tell war stories about how rough their night was doing 3 calls. Gosh darn! 3? How did you function the next day? It's things like this that add to the burn out. You have new people coming into this field with it a figured out before they even see their first patient. They lack education, they lack awareness, and it's these things that kill you.
So on top of this, I've been faced with a lack of disrespect from nurses at a certain hospital. Normally I would sugar coat this but since it irked me to this point. I'm throwing it all out there. I am more that used to being treated with nothing but disrespect by nurses from Hackensack hospital. All my colleagues are all aware and prepared to be disrespected by the brand new nurses at this hospital who believe that if you are not a paramedic, that you have no idea what you are doing or talking about. I am proud to say the hospital that I work for, jersey city medical center, backs up and listens to what the emts say, because they understand that we have a slight clue as to what's going on. But I was shocked to take a patient to holy name hospital and be disrespected by a nurse there. The nurses there are generally so nice to the emts and don't give us attitude. With the exception of a nurse who continued to question my treatment of every patient and then proceeded to harp on my simple mistake when giving a report. I later find out that she is also a Hackensack nurse(shocking!). For some reason this just set me off. I break my ass doing this job with the rest of my colleagues and I'm aware that you don't know me from Adam, but I give you the professionalism and the respect you deserve, despite you acting like a four letter word that shares 3 of the 4 letters in the word "aunt".
The emergency rooms also serve as a place of reunions. A place to shoot the shit with coworkers and even other towns. The funny thing about bullshitting here is that you need to watch what you say there. This incident a supervisor from one of my jobs decided to run his mouth to my coworkers at another job. It's great to hear that someone has a problem with you through the grape vine and doesn't have the balls to say it to my face. This drama just adds more fuel to the fire.
You pile all of this shit together on top of working a 60+ hour week. You finally get to the point where you don't want to leave your bed. You can't eat. You can't sleep. You are just sick of everything and everyone. That is what burnout feels like. I joke when I say that I'm gonna hang up my ems career and find a job that I don't have to deal with people. I think I am going to paint roads or inspect tires. Yeah. I can see a life of tires in my future. As the judge says, "yeah well, the world needs ditch diggers too!"
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