I'm a firefighter slash EMT I recently and recently I went on a call where a
patient didn't live not unusual by any means
unfortunately I deal with loss of life on almost a daily basis I detach and do
my job always working to get better this call I failed to detach it hit me hard
when the patient's husband let out a chilling let out chilling screams as his
thirty year old wife went from alert in talking to dead within minutes
I let myself enter into his shoes at that moment I got over it quick during
my days off and moved on it's part of the job and I accept that but my
question is when does it become inhumane to detach do we sometimes need to let
some weakness through to remain grounded when dealing with such major incidents
as loss of life okay first of all sympathy and empathy are not weaknesses
they're not weaknesses in fact it actually takes strength to be able to
deal with these types of the situations and these types of emotions the weak
move would actually be to cut those emotions off completely so that being
said as you know obviously there is a dichotomy because you cannot let the
emotions overwhelm you as a matter of fact if you get overwhelmed by your
feelings then you can't do your job properly which in its own right is
inhumane because now you're not able to treat the patients that you're trying to
save because you're getting too emotional about it
so what do you have to do the answer for the for the millionth time of a
different subject but comes up all times you've got to find balance you have to
find balance between being emotional enough about not being too emotional you
have to learn to recognize if you're going too far in one direction or the
other you have to do a self-assessment you have to look and see and make sure
that the that you see the people you're treating as people
you have to look at them and make sure that you're seeing them as people that
you're not seeing them as a hunk of meat right you have to do that you have to
make sure that you're doing that at the same time you cannot afford emotionally
to go through the pain of loss every time you see someone die cuz that's also
gonna be a problem you can't afford emotionally to do that you can't go
through that pain over and over and over again so you have to like you said you
have to detach normally do a good job with that um I've seen guys get wounded
I've seen guys get killed I've been around a lot of death and when when it
was around me I didn't have time to stop and think about it I had to work to do
I had to detach myself and do my job at the same time when it's over and that of
time was appropriate it's like you got to connect with what happened and make
sure that you are dealing with it appropriately and you know I always
thank firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and and police and military but you
know paramedics and EMTs you're only showing up if someone is in a bad way
and I know that's hard physically and it's hard mentally and it's hard
emotionally so find a balance keep yourself balanced make sure you're not
going to form one direction or the other and thanks for doing your job man that's
like easy but sometimes you forget that about EMTs yeah fire friendly that's the
only time you know where they spray I mean pretty much yeah no getting called
because someone is in a bad way that's the whole thing what they're showing up
for man and you know cops too like like it's easy to be on the outside when
you're going to parks and you know and if your job is like you know me I press
record and make the or make videos or whatever you know and this is like every
day so it kind of forms this kind of vision you know my
world whatever but EMTs and every day everytime you get the call it's just
it's just the question is just oh how bad yeah you know that's what it is how
bad how bad of a situation is the person I'm about to go content with what's
their situation yeah they are they could be everything from a minor situation to
they're going to die in front of me again again it's a new person will and
their life and their kids and their family and you know Peter Tia talked
about some of that the becoming a bit jaded in fact it's a pretty horrific
story and it's worth listening to that podcast when he was on and he talked
about how he got to a point where some patients he started to look at I like
Matt he'd be mad at them yeah mad at them and that's what you have to avoid
is getting to this point you got to you got to do your best to stay emotionally
detached enough that you can do your job but at the same time you can't be
looking at other human beings as if they're just a piece of meat yeah so
hard job