Rants on a job....

I enjoy my job.

Not 'love', because that particular emotion should be reserved for people who are very important in your life. But, I enjoy working as a paramedic. Note I didn't say 'being a paramedic', because my job is not my existence. I am a husband, and I am a Dad. My occupation is paramedic. I don't let my vocation define who I am. I'm not one of those types in the EMS field who festoon their personal vehicle with stickers, decals, lights and sirens that scream to the world "I AM EMS....LOVE ME!", nor do I wear at least one piece of clothing every day that has some pithy EMS slogan on it (Paramedics do it with lights and sirens!). I admit I do have an Alameda County paramedic sticker on my vehicle, but it serves a different purpose. It is used as a ticket avoidance apparatus, in case I happen to be pulled over by law enforcement for doing something more befitting an Oakland Raider fan. I have only had to rely on that sticker a few times in my lifetime, since I am basically a safe driver who is occasionally overcome with mild road rage when someone does something stupid on the road in front of me. With that sticker I have a 100% success rate of citation avoidance in the few times I have been pulled over.

But I digress...

There are distinct sub-groups within the EMS employee pool nowadays. You have the career EMS people (like myself) who are satisfied to have steady work, a good paycheck and job security in these days of economic uncertainty. Usually you find workers with 10 or more years on the job in this category. I myself have worked for AMR for over 25 years, and my partner has been with the company for over three decades. Then, there is the middle group, where the average seniority is around five to ten years, and quite a few of those folks are using EMS as a stepping stone into the fire service or some other medical field. Lastly, you have the young newbies who really have no clue what they want to be when they grow up, and thought it would be cool to scream around the streets with lights and sirens blaring, and stick needles into people. I took a few fire tests in the past, only because most fire departments were starting to 'go paramedic', and lots of ambulance medics were getting on with fire departments. I got a few job offers, but they weren't with departments I wanted to be a part of at the time. I am one of those people who run *out* of burning buildings, not into them. Plus, I had a couple of very young children at home, and I wanted to make sure I was coming home to them at the end of a shift. So I stuck it out with AMR, and generally I think it has been a good choice. Lately, however...this job seems to be becoming more like a high school soap opera than a vocation.

One thing that really pisses me off is the work ethic that some of our employees display. For some of the younger workers, and a few of the older ones as well, their job gets in the way of the partying and vacation trips. Weekends are especially bad. If the weather is nice, and someone has mentioned Vegas or a lake trip in a Facebook blog, these folks call in "sick" for their shifts and head off for the fun, leaving the responsible employees who actually *do* show up for work to pick up the slack. Scathing MySpace and Facebook comments, memos and cartoons around the deployment center have little to no effect. There are other employees who post inappropriate and probably harassing posts on other employees' social networking pages, thinking they are funny and cute. I certainly hope the offended employees are saving those posts as legal defense in the inevitable workplace harassment lawsuits that are forthcoming. Other employees have the scheduling folks wrapped around their fingers, and score the 'cush' shifts before anyone else has the chance to pick them up, or work trades to their benefit so they get to work in 'The Valley", instead of Oakland. Rather than play by the book, so to speak, they want to push the system as far as it will benefit them. Is this a workplace, or some deranged high school scenario? To these system manipulators, us older folks are referred to as "grumpy old men", and whiners. Why? Because we come to work, do our jobs and go home? I recently spent a day at the office, separating the daily paperwork and getting it ready for the billing process. I was blown away by the inequity that exists in the field with regard to work volume. Some units had log sheets that were almost full, with 12 or 15 calls in a 12 hour shift. Other units that worked basically the same hours in the same area had two or three calls in that same time period. Call dodging and 'dispatcher manipulation' has become almost an art form for some of these crews. I can't count the number of times I have stayed up to restock the unit, or take the extra fifteen minutes at four in the morning returning from a call to go get fuel so the oncoming crew has a full tank to start their shift, or cleaned the station so they aren't walking into a dump. I also can't count the number of times the off-going grew has stated "The rig's good to go", and upon closer inspection there are only two IV set ups remaining, the main oxygen tank is at 300 psi and all but one portable tank is empty, the gurney is unmade, the trash container is overflowing, the fuel tank is below half full, and all but one ECG monitor battery is dead. Yup...."Good to go".....right out of service.

Now I will be the first to admit I am far from perfect. I hate getting out of bed at night for calls. I've hated it since Day 1 and I certainly hate it 26 years later. I am definitely not cheerful and happy-go-lucky at 3am after no sleep and 10 calls. My daytime demeanor is infinitely better than my post-midnight mood. But I do not short-change my patients. They will get my best treatment and assessment, but there probably won't be joking and laughing involved. I will be working a different shift soon, 12 hours at night, so I can sleep in my own bed every day. Knowing that you're going home after twelve hours surely improves your mood, rather than getting beat for 12 hours and knowing your shift is only half finished.

I'm hoping that things will eventually work themselves out, karma being what it is and all that. For those people who come to work every day, do their job to the best of their abilities and do at least a little to make AMR a better place to work, I thank you. It is that work ethic that keeps even the smallest glimmer of hope alive within me, and keeps me coming back to work day after day. If you see someone doing something stupid, or you're tired of picking up someone else's slack, speak up and say something! I certainly appreciate the effort you are putting forth. And to those employees who treat the job and the workplace as their own whipping bitch to get whatever will benefit them the most...your time will come. People will eventually tire of the bullshit and do something about it. You'd probably spend less energy just doing the right thing than running around trying to avoid it.