Perspective: We cannot lose sight of who we are here for

·         Responded to a car wreck, the driver of one of the vehicles seemed more devasted than usual that she just totaled her car. She kept saying that she didn’t know what she was going to do. We started to reassure her, that she had insurance, cars were replaceable, that the important thing was that she was okay, the usual. She continued to cry and stated that she was living in her car, and now had nowhere to go. No local family, no real local friends, no local support system.

·         Heard the sobs of the family that lost their early 20s son to addiction, after finally having him agree to seek treatment later in the week. He was in asystole the entire resuscitation; he died on the floor of his childhood bedroom.

·         One of the sweetest ladies I have ever met while working in the ER always came in with her husband, who was a brittle diabetic. For the first time I ran an EMS call at their house, which was an old farmhouse no bigger than a shed. It was dead of winter, snow on the ground and probably in the low 20s outside. We stepped inside and found Mr. on the floor in the kitchen. He was unhurt, just couldn’t get up. As I bent to say hi and help him up, I noticed my backside getting quite toasty. It was then that I realized the oven door was open, and it was on, and that was how they were trying to heat their house.

·         A young mother in her 20s, with a child less than a year old, called us for weakness, nausea, and vomiting. On the way to the address, you think she has the flu, or any of the current viral things going around. Not until you meet her and her husband do you realize that this round of chemo is hitting her especially hard. She has metastatic breast cancer that has spread to her brain. You hear her baby crying from the other room.

·         Walked in to a cardiac arrest, only to find the patient too far gone. You brush the cockroach away that is sitting on her forehead. The husband is waiting for you as you walk back out of the bedroom, looking at you knowingly, already beginning to process what you are about to say.

These are just a few examples of the countless experiences I have shared with patients and families over the years. These experiences have changed me, for sure, and helped to form my view of the world. Walking by them in the street, I would not know what they were going through, I wouldn’t know their story. In EMS, we must remember to listen and treat more than the patient, we need to treat the person who called upon us. Talking to people is the best part of my job. Yes, obviously, I love the medicine and making people feel better and saving the occasional life and all of that, but the human connection and perspective that EMS gives you is something I don’t think you get in any other profession, it’s different than even what our hospital partners experience. We go into people’s homes, where they live every day, it is an intimate experience and a privilege. You get a glimpse of humanity that few get to see, and few seem to care about. I acknowledge that I am very fortunate in life, I have a wife, two kids, a couple dogs, a cat, I have a roof over my head, I make good money. My mom was sick a lot when I was growing up, but I had a good childhood. Yes, in EMS, I make good money. Shoot me an email, I’ll tell you how. (Actually, I’ll just send you a link to the careers site for my County) All I am missing is the white picket fence and it’s the picture of the American dream.

This is why it is so important to have compassion and empathy, and the ability to see the world from someone else’s point of view. An instructor in a class I took called it seeing the world through someone else’s lens. I have never lived out of my car, I have never had to heat my house with my oven, I have never lost a loved one to addiction, and I have never had to fear losing my wife to cancer while holding our baby, thankfully. But I can certainly empathize with how damn hard all those situations must be. I couch surfed for a few weeks, that sucked, but I had places to stay. I went down a dark road with alcohol in my 20s, but I woke up and pulled myself out of it. I lost my mom in my 20s, still miss her everyday almost 20 years later. But not everyone has the resources, support system and mental resilience to bounce back.

There are three types of empathy: cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and compassionate empathy. Cognitive empathy is the ability to see the other person’s view, to put yourself in their shoes and understand how the other person might be feeling. Emotional empathy allows us to feel what another person is feeling. It is an emotional connection with another person and being attuned to what that other person is going through. Compassionate empathy is the ability to understand what another person needs from you, or the sense of being there for another person.

I think it is an even simpler concept than that. Texting with my friend Casey Smith, who is a paramedic in Florida, he said “Service is the last part of EMS. Yes, the system needs to change, but that is the entire healthcare system. I can’t do that now, but I can care for my patients.” We are so quick to get wrapped up in defining what an “emergency” is and whether this person “deserves” to call EMS that we forget that last word of EMS: Service. Serving people. People that call us, a lot of times because they have nowhere else to turn, and depend on us, trust us, to help them in their time of need. Yes, there are people that abuse the system. Yes, the emergency departments are overcrowded. Yes, our healthcare system needs to be overhauled. But we cannot lose focus on why we are here, and that is to serve people.

We all get tired; we all get some level of compassion fatigue. However, keeping perspective, having empathy, a willingness to serve others and doing what is best for those who call upon us is how we truly move forward as a profession.