Fireland

We are a combination department now. after 100+ years of all volunteer our valley has changed with the normal people moving out and all the elite rich moving in and they don't volunteer. This fall we are putting on 9 more full time people. Our requirements for the Volunteers is the IFSAC FF I program before being allowed on a rig then it is 6 months probation after that.

I am just dumb... been and EMT for 15 and fireman for 18 years... for a small town ... now we have gone full time and I am lucky as I was hired as one of the first ..... I have been on so many calls I can't remember them if they did not make a significant impact on my life. Been down the burnout road learned CISD from both sides... this side is better... and I am not telling you which side I am on..... I absolutely love helping the new people learn to do their job better or get involved or teach......and will help anyone any place just ask this is what I do ... have done and will continue to do until they put me in the ground.... I don't do this job for the glory, pay or lights and sirens I do it because good people get themselves if bad places and God blessed me with the ability to help them get out of it... I learned 2 months ago why I do this when my Grand baby was blue and I knew what to do to help her without getting upset or calling 911 and she is alive and well today.... so all the years of helping others paid off...... If you need anything let me know ... I will help.....

Look on the other side of things the ones we get to see are the ones that usually want help and don't know how to ask for it. If you ex would have called an ambulance maybe things would be different. Look at the family you are helping by keeping this person from going through with it. ...... this is the way I deal with it... but have to admit was recruited to work at the local 911 center a few months ago and we were super busy for our small agency... and when a guy called and said he was going to kill him self... I without hesitation said " you've got to be sh?**n me" after I got over the shock of what I said ... we got him some help.... so it is not always easy to hold the tounge...

sorry here is another link to. http://occmed.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/48/4/237.pdf

At the bottom is a link to one site with good information about burn out. However you need to go to your stress debrief team and see who the mental health professional is. Sounds to me like you have more than just an incident or just school. In emergency care we often get caught up in helping everyone else except ourselves and overtime it takes it toll. It does not matter if you have been doing this for 2 days, 2 months, 2 years or 20 years it can catch up with you if you don't take care of your self. We had one EMT that went off the deep end on a routine transfer. Come to find out the lady looked like her Mom who had SERIOUSLY abused her when she was a child and seeing this lady opened up the gate for her that she has never been able to close. Find a good counselor I did not use the one our system provided, I found one that specialized in emergency workers while she is not one of us she knows how to help. I just felt the one we had with our unit was too much of a talker and I did not want everyone thinking I was weak, or could not handle the job. Never mind that in our small community I picked up 9 patients in 2 weeks that all died and the oldest was 12 and my best friends son. I just could not figure out why I was burnt out. It took about 2 years to get myself back to feeling good and like a productive member of society. If your proctor does not understand this then maybe it is time for him to do something different. when we loose the caring about each other or the students that are going to replace those of us who have been at it for ever then it is time for us to move along. let me know if this web site helps. I have all the papers that show this stuff but can not find it on line. http://www.stressdoc.com/four_stages_burnbout.htm

You need to RUN don't walk and visit with a stress debreif counselor. I have been through burn out and every step they talk about except death. It took me two years to get things back into perspective and my career back on line. Don't mess with burn out do the things they tell you. Go have fun, exercise, eat right and most important TALK to people who have been there and find out what they did to get back. You are important to the EMS world and your first priority is to take care of yourself. In the area I am in we often pick up friends and family and this leads to a lot of burn out and so we get to practice a lot on recognizing the steps of it and the steps to recovery from it. You are way tooooooo new in your career to be burning out. If you want to know more or you need to know where to go LET ME KNOW... true I don't know you but you are an emergency worker and we are all responsible to help each other as the rest of the world does not understand us on a good day let alone when things are not good. Heck most of them don't understand our rigs take gasoline or diesel like there cars they think they are magic and just keep running.

Many years ago I worked on a vol ambulance and was in the middle of a big job when we were called for a transport of an elderly man with cancer. I figured no big thing we will just get it done and I can get back to my "busy" life. My attitude was bad from the time the call went out and then when we arrived the man wanted this and that and stalled us loading him on the cot. This only intensified my attitude. After a big deal we loaded him on the cot and as we went through his living room he asked us to stop so he could take one last look around his house before he left. We did and as I looked at the man and realized that this would be the last time he would see his house nothing in my day was that important. He died that night. That was 18 years ago since then I have never allowed a call to get in the way of my day I treat every patient with respect and give them my full attention no matter how small I may think their complaint is. I am full time now and we run a tremendous amount of calls and it does not matter if I am on duty or off and do a call-back the patient gets my full support.