We were dropping off a regular patient at one of the hospitals the other day. A chronic PCP user. The “crusty” old nurse in the psych ward threw a fit complaining that she had just dealt with him two nights before. The fit was not good-natured banter, but clearly a I’m being imposed upon and you are a piece of shit fit. I felt like saying to her you are either (despite your age) brand new or you have been here too long. Burn out is an occupational hazard, which I have found infects either the relatively new or those whose lives outside of work have grown unpleasant. I will give everyone a period to outlast their burnout, but then you need to find another job or take time off to fix your own life Repeat patients are the territory in emergency medicine. No one likes working with miserable people. I’ll accept burnout a little more in EMS than in nursing because it seems to me nurses have more options to seek employment than EMS. Tired of the urban ER, go work in a Dr.s office or a walk-in clinic in a suburb or take a 9-5 job in endoscopy. To newer EMS burnouts, whose burnout has lasted longer than 3 months, get out now and find something that makes you less miserable because you don’t get a pass forever.
I am sitting in my ambulance outside a McDonald’s right now (using their free wi-fi). I am watching one of their employees, quite possibly even their manager, walking around the outside of the building, picking up every stray scrap of paper on the ground he can find. He has a broom and dustpan. When he is done, he will get a hose and wash the sidewalks down. He does this every morning. You can’t find a cigarette butt in his parking lot. This man has a good work ethic. I am the only one watching him, but he is performing like he is before a sellout audience in Carnegie Hall.
Who you work with is important not only to your health but the health of your organization. I have been doing this over twenty years and can say that burnout is not an isolated problem. It is an infectious contagion. At times I have seen in EMS and in EDs burnout become almost a badge of honor, as if being burnout makes you an official member of the tribe. When I first started I thought the crusty old burned out triage nurse was a great character. Some I liked to think had hearts of gold, others clearly were just plain mean. One nurse would punch everyone having chest pain, if they groaned, she put them in the waiting room. You can’t have musculoskeletal pain and a real medical problem at the same time, she seemed to think.
Recently, I heard a triage nurse chastise a patient for wasting the system’s resources. The nurse was quite nasty and aggressive about it. It took me aback because it had been years since I had heard something like that where years ago it was much more common place. I almost said to the nurse, you could get fired for talking like that to someone. EMS used to talk like that all the time. I even talked like that a few times many years ago, but I don’t do it anymore, and it is rare in my organization. There is something positive to be said for manners and correctness.
I go into many hospitals and they all have their own vibe, the same I think is true of ambulance services. A paramedic from one service recently was fired from his part-time job at another service. The reason was attitude. Doing what was permissible and part of the culture at one service was clearly not at the other service. To which I say, bravo.
If you are miserable and hate our patients, I don’t want you working with me. My best partners have always been the most pleasant people. If I have a partner who bitches all day, i find myself bitching as well and go home feeling miserable.
I wonder what the guy here at McDonald’s thinks as he sweeps up the cigarette butts. Is he thinking “f-ing slobs. I hate these f-ing people.” Or is he is thinking, “My sidewalk is glistening, the sky is blue, today is going to be a good day.”
