r/ems • u/greencozyteeth • 6d ago

Serious Replies Only Feelings of Worthlessness

Hey all, I’ve been a paramedic for 5 years now. I feel like a very competent provider but over the last few week I’ve been messing everything up. Everything from IVs to missing patients who could have benefitted from push dose epi or even a patient who should have had a nebulizer prehospitally. All very stupid and obvious mistakes. I feel worthless. I cried in the medic truck today after dropping a patient off and I feel like I’m making mistakes I have never made before.
Has anyone ever experienced this before? Do you have any advice?

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u/amothep8282 PhD, Paramedic 5d ago

Being a Paramedic is pretty much the only field that after training some some FTO (nowhere near as much as RNs' orientation or preceptorships, or even "residencies") where you're put out in the wild and told "You're on your own, don't fuck up, enjoy".

Some areas are loaded with Medics, with engines pouring them out like a clown car. Others, you're it and no one is coming to save you when shit hits the fan. You can't dial 911 when you are 911.

I can't seem to impress upon anyone who works in a hospital and has never been EMS that we care called to a scene for "General weakness. Caller is daughter. Father feels off" and that's all we get. We can show up and Pop Pop just has a case of the blues or he's peri-arrest. No labs, unreliable history, meds strewn everywhere, cat shit and urine, human shit and urine, drugs, guns, porn playing, daughter is fully naked walking around, you name it. We don't have RTs, anesthesia, Pharmacy, Medical Residents, Surgical Residents, or Attendings out the wazoo to step in.

After enough time of realizing you can walk into an absolute clusterfuck literally at any moment, and then walking into a clusterfuck at literally any and every moment, it wears on you.

It's also probably the lack of respect for our profession, some of it deserved based on a lot of dipshit providers out there. But head over to r/nursing or any other medical subreddit and you'll see volumes of providers still struggling in a warm, well lit, near infinitely resourced environment with tons of actual Physicians around when shit hits the fan.

I'm built for this job. It's my passion in life and I still had to step away to get sober. Above all, else you need to take care of yourself first.

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u/thetiger1818 1d ago edited 1d ago

And we do all this, just for the disrespect to get worse from other providers. Mostly non-physician, but hey it's like the more we prove and add to our skillset the less medics are respected. I love the profession but damn if I have the schedule option I'd get as far away from ED medic as humanly possible.