my name is Matt. I'm a paramedic. I've been with American Medical Response for almost 5 years. My name is Brit. I've been a paramedic for 5 years. My name is George. I've been a paramedic for now 2 years. When we are actually working on calls, it's really fast-paced. It's intense. There's a lot going on around you. It can be kind of hectic, kind of chaotic, but it's a lot of fun, a lot of independence, a lot of thinking on your feet, not having direct supervision, and being responsible for some pretty heavy stuff at times. We have calls that are pretty high intensity, maybe like multiple casualties or children or big heavy things. They have a critical incident stress debriefing where they get all the agencies in that were involved with that scene. You just sit down at a table, and people just kind of say how they feel. Everyone deals with pain or grief differently, and as

employees. We do the same thing. Um, you know, it's generally easier because we're not emotionally involved with any of the patients that we're dealing with. And you'd kind of have to be able to detach yourself emotionally and just fall back on this training that we have gotten, you know, just doing our jobs, physically assessing people, and trying to help in any way that we can. Um, and then we deal with our own emotional baggage afterwards with the debriefings and that kind of stuff. It's kind of sick, but we make a lot of jokes. All of us do. We have a, if you don't have a kind of a twisted, sick sense of humor before you start doing this, you'd end up having it. I think that's pretty common through all of Emergency Services is you tend to laugh at a lot of things that probably most people wouldn't laugh at. I think that's probably the biggest coping mechanism during it, uh, when it's

actually happening. You kind of, you don't really, at least for me personally, you don't notice it as much as until afterwards when you have quiet time. You kind of sit there and go, and when it kind of sinks in, and 'cause when you're in the moment, at least for me, it's uh, you kind of just do what you're supposed to do, and you don't see or it doesn't register a lot of the things that are happening around you. I mean, a register is on a, like I guess you'd say a technical level, you know um, but as far as emotionally, you, that part kind of just gets shut off until you have time to kind of sit down and really kind of absorb what whatever it was that just happened. And that's usually for me, that's when things start to correlate between, you know, stuff that may have happened in the past in my personal life and stuff. Um, I mean, there's always calls that you run on people, and you kind of, it hits a different nerve because you

know it. It person might look close to your mom or resemble your mom or have the same accent as your mom, and you see, you know, the pain, so you think of your own family and stuff like that, and how much pain that, you know, and you're grateful that they're okay and things like that. So yeah, there's always times that something's triggered something inside of you. It's just kind of how you deal with it afterwards is the big thing, you know. I've been fortunate not to have anybody what I'm really, really close to pass away, and you know, my first experience with death on a call, it, you know, it was a younger person. I believe he was in his 50s or something like that, and it's just kind of interesting 'cause, you know, you always hear about someone older passing away. You really don't think of it as the younger, so you know, it made you appreciate life a little bit more and cherish your friends and your family, and you know, you want to keep them close.

and tell them I love you, and you know I care about you a little bit more. I was seven when I lost my first grandparent, and uh, it was uh, it was a really uh, very surreal experience going going watching the the family grieve and going to the funeral, and and I really didn't comprehend the the long-term ramifications of having lost my first grandfather um, and having lost other grandparents since. There's a very emotional component to you know losing a family member and and that you can't really um put into words when you're comparing it to to death on the job um, you. It's always a very detached um focus that you have when we're going into another person's home and we're dealing with death in another person's home. You you don't allow yourself to to buy into the family's emotional because we can't um, we have a job to do while we're there, and that has to be our primary focus. Everybody wants to see kind of what's going on, what are they doing, you

know and human n you know human nature. We're all curious. We all want to morbid curiosity, exactly. We all want to find out what's going on, and if it's happening to someone else, it's a lot easier for us to detach. I mean, that's kind of like BR was saying with our job. People just detach themselves and go look at them, go, Oh, ew, look at that. Oh, but 'cause it's not related to you, it's not your family, who cares? It's just another person out there generally. Fire captains or police officers will try and separate family from the victim, especially if it's an emotionally charged scene. Sometimes it gets really emotional in there, and you have to ask for more people to come in to help the paramedic separate that. But you know, as soon as someone passes away, we're the first ones really to kind of come up to you, and you know, we try to tell the person we will stay on scene as long as it takes to make sure that that person gets their

assistance either if they need a priest or, you know, just an ear, a family member, just anything. We're there, and we'll stay on scene as long as it takes to make sure that that person feels supported at that time. You know, it's taught me that everyone does grieve differently. You know, everyone goes through all the stages of grief, but they don't go through them the same, and there's no right or wrong way. And, um, it's made, it's made my experience have made it easier for me to speak about death, and, and, you know, it's made me, um, come to grips with, with death, and that families deal with it every day. Uh, and most of us don't see that. Most, most of us only have a handful of days in our lifetime where we'll have to deal with something like that, and it takes that stigma away from death, death, and you understand that it's just a natural part of life, and you know, everything has to start, and everything has to finish. You never know when your time

here is done. I mean, there's SP it so many times where you see people that are one minute driving along, having a wonderful, you know, Valentine's Day weekend, and the next minute, one of them is dead 'cause they crash the car just coming home to your family every night and, you know, giving your wife or your husband or, you know, your significant other a kiss, or your kids, you know, or whoever it could be, even your dog, you know, just appreciating every second you have 'cause we've seen things that has happened to young kids, we've seen things happen to old people where, you know, it doesn't matter if it's your time, it's your time, and so you just hope that you have one extra day, and you know, every day, you're, you're, I at least feel blessed and, you know, thankful that I have one more day and enjoy that and live it out to the fullest.

Paramedics, Death, and Dying

Paramedics, Death, and Dying