Man in uniform

After a snowstorm, it's always likely that we'll get an increased number of calls for motor vehicle accidents, which is actually a call that so far I haven't seen. However (knock on wood) that hasn't happened yet tonight, even though we've just experienced the worst snow of the season and getting here at all tonight was pretty rough. So far, I've made myself a cup of sleepy time tea and ate a number of delicious cupcakes that our squad president baked.

But as I'm sitting here listening to radio chatter and playing with my penlight, I'm reminded of the times lately that one of the most fundamental things associated with medics - the uniform - has come up. I definitely didn't realize exactly what it meant until I was in one, but uniforms are tricky things. For example, everyone in the squad knows exactly what each patch means and how to tell something like an EMT's level of training with a glance. However, that's not general knowledge among the people who call us, or even necessarily among other members of emergency services. When people see a uniform, they immediately and understandably associate it with all of their concepts of the skills and secret knowledge members of that profession are supposed to have. In our case, that means that by glancing at us, someone will probably assume that we all can do CPR well, shock a person out of cardiac arrest, put in a breathing tube, and perform other procedures. While this may or may not be true in a lot of cases, the important thing is that people don't look at me in the field and see someone who may never have dealt with a broken leg before; they see a trained professional who is there to make everything better, and when you're faced with that, it's a staggering feeling.

For example, I responded to a call for a possible concussion at a sporting event a couple weeks back that, when we arrived on scene, was clearly a minor injury but still definitely worth a trip to the hospital, to be on the safe side. However, the coach wanted us to bring the patient to a hospital much closer to the patient's home, which would have put us out of service for at least an extra hour, as this hospital was much further away from our garage. The coach approached me about this and started asking questions, and I froze up - I didn't know protocols concerning where to bring patients and couldn't answer even a simple question like "what are her options on where to go for treatment?" Luckily, a more experienced EMT with me quickly fielded this, and she ended up going to the hospital closest to us.

Another time, more recently, I was asked by a very worried mother if she could ride with her daughter to the hospital. I managed to think through that one, and immediately answered yes, since I knew this was something we did allow. That was an occasion where the entire family was around one downed member, and they would have all liked to crowd into the back with us. These are the situations where no amount of technical knowledge will answer for even a little bit of experience.

People drowning will latch on to anything they can to pull themselves out - even friends who try to help them. People in emergency situations probably feel and act in much the same way, and they look to a uniform as something they can hold on to for security. Being placed in that role and being able to act responsibly, which means being honest and not just saying that everything is going to be fine, is going to take a while to get used to.