Latest / Dispatched & Dysfunctional / STOP EATING YOUR YOUNG The future of EMS depends on who we choose to become today.
Transcript
- Chris: Alright, welcome back to Dispatched and Dysfunctional. Today's episode isn't about a call. ⁓ it's not about PTSD. It's not about burnout. It's about something I've noticed for a while now. Something I think every one of us, whether you've been doing this for six months, thirty years, ten years, we can all help to fix it. Not overnight of course, but ⁓ culture doesn't change overnight. But if enough of us decide we're gonna do better, eventually the profession will get better. And honestly, that's exactly what EMS needs. That's why we're stagnant at the moment. we were all once new. So think back to your first shifts. Remember how nervous you were. This is about how we eat our young, pretty much, the new guys. so remember how nervous you were again, checking your pockets every five minutes, wondering where everyone was, everything was, hoping nobody asked you a question if it everyone else. Wondering if today was the day everyone figured out you didn't know what the hell or you were doing. Everyone else has been there. Every single t every single one of us. Don't want to hear anyone say they haven't. and if we're being honest, some of us are still there. Hell, some of us I can guess ourselves after twenty years, thirty years. I know I do it after ten. That's not weakness. That's because we actually give a shit and we care. Experience doesn't erase self doubt. It changes it. It makes you better. It makes the what it it makes you from a rookie to a FTO to a trainer to whatever. it i it stops the rookies from wondering, Am I doing everything right? You know, the experience providers always wonder did I miss something? Did I do something wrong? The day we stop questioning ourselves is the day we stop growing. Honestly it's the day you need to get the hell out of the field. there are two people learning and here's something that we don't talk about enough. we always focus on the rookie, the new EMT, the new medic, the new advanced. But there actually two people learning. We learn from them, they learn from us. The rookies are always wondering, Am I asking the right questions? Am I asking too many questions? Am I annoying everyone? Am I getting the right answers? Am I ever gonna be good enough to do this by myself? The answer to all that is yes. You don't ask what you don't know because if you don't know it, you have to ask. and the thing is, we've all asked questions. We've all wondered, Am I pissing these guys off? Am I doing something wrong? Is something I'm doing wrong? ⁓ and they're all real. but here's the thing that we don't talk about. The experienced medics, the experienced EMTs, ⁓ who are training you. Are always wondering too, did I explain that to them right? Did I forget something important? Am I teaching them my bad habits? What if they ask me something I don't know? Or do I deserve to even be a teacher? and if you've ever asked yourself those questions, you're probably exactly the kind of person I want teaching me. Because you actually give a shit. You care. Because you understand what's at stake. What's you know, that that teaching isn't about knowing everything, it's about caring enough to keep learning it yourself. And sometimes the best answer you can give is I don't know. Let's look it up together. Let's go talk to an FTO. Let's go talk to supervisor. Let's go talk to a director. Somebody. And that again, that's not weakness, that's leadership. ⁓ The school we goes to teach the medicine, the field teaches the judgment. and school don't teach you everything that there's no way in hell it can. You spend months in EMT school. You spend a year, maybe two becoming a paramedic, depending on the area of the program. And you pass every written exam. You pass every scenario. You get it in the bag. Graduate with good grades. They give you the certificate and you're ready to go. But you're not. You ain't fully prepared. Not because the school fails you. But because the school can't teach you the experience you need to know to understand what's going on. It can't re recreate the three o'clock in the morning on the side of the road pouring rain or holding the baby in front of the mother and the father that's saying, I'm sorry, there's all we can do. ⁓ it can't recreate the chaos of the scenes that changes you. Again, the school teaches the medicine, the field teaches the judgment. We as experienced providers know things they don't teach the newbies in school because we've learned lessons in the field no one can teach. Things a brand new provider may not even think could happen. We've learned scene safety isn't something you just check once. It's something you constantly check. We all know a scene can go from perfectly safe to ⁓ hell no, we're leaving the fuck out of here in split seconds. ⁓ we've learned the patient. joking w with you while you're loading them can suddenly stop talking, stop breathing, and now they're a cardiac arrest in their driveway and you need to start CPR. ⁓ we've learned dispatch information is where the story starts, not necessarily where it ends, and not necessarily that's true. Not establish all dispatchers, but sometimes y'all give us wrong information. ⁓ again, difficulty breathing becomes a cardiac arrest, a lift assist becomes a STEMI. ⁓ We've all learned that the ambulances have personalities too. ⁓ sometimes a truck runs perfectly and then you go get lunch and the truck doesn't restart. or you're doing IFT, you're halfway across the country and the engine starts making weird noises and ⁓ wait, we have black smoke. again, you know, you're managing your patient while wondering if your ambulance is going to be another emergency. Just remember the families don't always react the way we expect them to. Some scream, some get angry, some laugh, and some become completely crawl quiet. Hell, some chase us with machetes. And those are the lessons that the field haunts us one shift at a time. ⁓ usually the hard way. That's why experienced providers matter, not because we know everything, but because we've already stepped into some of the shit that the new provider doesn't even know exists yet. Our job is to point those holes out to them before they fail, before they fall on their ass and don't get back up. And before anybody thinks I'm preaching from some mountaintop, I'm I'm not. Don't get that wrong. You know, I'm living it right now. I'm a paramedic. I've worked DMS. I've worked offshore. I've worked in numerous environments. I've taught people hell, I've even taken care of critical patients. You know, now I'm working at a fire department. I've taken a critical care class. You know what? I don't know those things. I'm asking questions. I'm working at a fire department right now that I've never done in my life. And I will gladly admit I don't know fire. You know, definitely not the way the people around me do. I've been through some of the classes, I've been through schools, I've trained. But if I'm being honest, some of the days feel like I just I'm gonna get myself killed. And not knowing that, you know, a class and knowing that a classroom setting and the field are two different things is something that I realized again. ⁓ I'm the new guy again, you know, I'm the rookie. ⁓ I know what it's like to wonder if I'm asking stupid questions, I do it on a daily fucking basis. You know, wonder if I should already know this answers or wonder if I'm still slowing everybody down. Wonder if I'm missing something that everyone else thinks is obvious. But you know what makes the difference? The people around you. It's the mentors that you have. I got a whole crew that I'd love to death. And they would help me with anything I need help with. ⁓ guys who answer stupid ass questions tell me there is no stupid questions, only stupid people. ⁓ but again, that's what they tell me. So don't ever think you're asking stupid questions. There is no such thing as a stupid question if you don't know the answer. You know, the guys I have around me are nothing of what I've seen before. I've never worked in a fire department. I ⁓ they're a great crew. Every shift is always better. You know, they they make sure I'm training, they make sure I know what I'm doing, and they invest in me. And I don't want to leave them hanging if ever possible. I want them to know that their investment in me is true and dedicated. You know, that's what great crews do. They build on each other, they help each other, they teach each other. And that's something I think we forget once we get some years behind us is we all need the mentors, we all need help, you know, we're not just the students, we're not just the rookies, it's all of us. ⁓ for instance, we did a class the other day and some of the guys have been there for years didn't know some the stuff I've taught. ⁓ but again, you can always be a mentor to one person and still s need somebody else yourself. I can teach something To some of the new guys that we got that haven't ever been an EMS or fire, period. And I can teach them the medicine and they can learn the fire right next to me. and that doesn't take anything away from anybody. It helps build the teams, it helps build camaraderie. And that's how it's supposed to work. You know, we don't need to eat our own people, we don't need to be jackasses to everybody. Just remember nobody should ever reach a point where they believe they've outgrown having somebody something they can learn from or somebody they can learn from. I hope I always have the people around me that know more than I do. ⁓ Offshore was a great experience, for instance. This fire department's a great hell, every company I've worked for really has been that way. and I hope I always have somebody I can walk up to and say, Hey, show me this. I have no idea what a fuck I'm doing. And I hope somebody always feels comfortable doing the same with me. I've worked with paragods. I've worked with dumbasses. and just for no some of the new people, if you've haven't heard of it before, a paragon is someone who thinks they know everything. ⁓ they're the ones who'd rather embarrass you than educate you. They're the ones who would make you afraid to ask a question because you don't want to become the station jokes. ⁓ and I've again I've worked to companies that didn't know or understand shit themselves. ⁓ and I've worked for some that are fucking phenomenal. But somehow I've expected myself and they've expected me to become a new provider and just figure it out. ⁓ I've worked for directors who've lost their way, people who've forgotten what leadership really is, you know, people who ate their own newbies. Maybe somebody did it to them and that's how they pay it back. I don't know. ⁓ but I I've seen the other side too. Again, I've worked for great companies. I've worked for places that want you to learn. They want you to ask questions. They want you to fail so you can learn. And let me be clear by that. I don't mean failing with a patient because nobody's bothering to supervise you. I mean little failures, training failures, harmless mistakes that you make while someone experienced is standing beside you. They don't bitch at you. They don't complain. They don't humiliate you. ⁓ they help build you and explain to you here's what happened. Here's what we here's why we do it this way. Let's try it again this way. And and you'll remember this next time. And you know what? That that's how it works. You did it. You do it. and they're not trying to prove they're smarter than you, they're better than you, or they're trying to Do anything better than you. They are trying to make you smarter and better than you were yesterday. And again, that's mentorship, that's leadership. And none of this means we lower our standards, of course. There's no fucking way. Absolutely not. You know, we hold people accountable. We expect them to study. We expect them to know their job. We correct them when they know they're wrong. We know they're wrong. We make them repeat something until they understand it. If they don't understand it, explain it. Help them understand it. Break it down different ways. And there's a huge difference between holding someone accountable and humiliating them. You know, being a mentor doesn't mean lowering the bar. It it means helping someone reach that bar. If you hire s hold yourself to a higher standard, hold someone else to it too, so they can learn it the way you want them to learn it. The way they deserve to learn it. I've always heard people say, I don't want to train my replacement. I don't want them to take my place. ⁓ they make more money than me. ⁓ they're better than me. That that no. that none of those sentences ever made sense to me. ⁓ and one day all of us will be replaced. We get old, we retire, we move on, we change careers. You know, hell, we get hurt. Or eventually someone else will answer the calls that we used to answer. and that's not failure. That's how professions survive. A real leader isn't trying to stay the smartest person in the room. A real leader builds people who eventually become better than they were. Imagine the EMT or the medic you trained becoming one of the best providers in your service. You know, that shouldn't threaten us, that shouldn't make us proud. That sh means that we love our damn job enough to help them and they learn they love it enough to learn it. Let them be the person that you want to run on your family, the person that you want to run on you if you're injured or sick. We all say it. EMS needs get better, fire needs get better. we all say we want better providers, we all want stronger departments, we want better care, better leadership, better attention. And you know, this is part of how we get there. Proper mentorship, not Facebook arguments, not speeches on how the new generation sucks ass. Not it start not any of that. It starts with us, one shift, one truck, one partner, one student. One rookie, one conversation, and one mentor. And understanding that none of us ever completely stop being the student. If you've been doing this 20 years, we need you. We need you to understand this. We don't just need your skills. We need your stories, your failures, your lessons. Pass them on. I've had people do it for me over the years, and it's been a phenomenal training round. If you're brand new, keep asking the questions that you want to ask, that you think you need to ask. Don't ever apologize to wanting for wanting to learn, for wanting to know something that you have no idea or clue about. And if someone makes you feel stupid for asking a legitimate question, find another fucking mentor. You know, they're out there. And if you're somewhere in the middle, maybe you're not the rookie anymore, but you sure as hell don't know what like you feel you're an expert either, that's a great thing. You know, teach somebody what you know. Then go find someone who will teach you what you don't know. And that's how this is supposed to work. At the end of the day, our patients don't care how many years we've been doing this shit. They don't care how many certifications we have. They care that the person walking through their doors knows what they're doing and knows enough to ask for help when they don't know what they're doing. That it's our responsibility not to protect our knowledge, but to pass it on. Because one day that rookie you're teaching might be the EMT of the medics standing over your wife, your husband, your parents, or your child, or hell even you. I've had buddies that ran on me that I went to medical school with. And the firefighter teaching me today might be the person beside me when things go bad tomorrow. You know, that that changes the way I look at my mentorships. We aren't just training employees. We are building the people we're eventually going to have to trust with our own lives. So teach them. Let them ask questions. Let them fuck up. Correct them. Challenge them. And don't do it in front of others. If there's something that's messed up on scene, take it behind closed doors. There's no reason to berate people in front of others. Expect more of people. Expect more from them. Expect more from yourself. And when they become better than you. Be proud of that shit. You did it. You made that person who they are. And that means that you're making this profession move forward. You know, and it just remember there's always someone better out there. There's someone out there who's willing to help you learn, who's willing to help teach you the way that you want to be treat tea taught. sorry, that was my rant for the day. ⁓ I just had to get it out. This has been dispatched dysfunctional. If this episode made you think of something, somebody or something, send it to ⁓ Thank the mentor who invested in you. I want to thank a few of them. ⁓ I don't want to say their names, but thank you for all the ones who have invested in me. And then be the some mentor that someone else needs. You know, school teaches you the medicine, the field teaches you the judgment. Mentorship is how we pass both down to the next generations. And if you want to connect with me, visit criticalrun.com. Hell, message me on the Dispatch to Dysfunctional Facebook page. We are always b I am building this for us, for you, for them, for all of us.