One of my current roles is that of a hiring manager. I schedule and conduct interviews with candidates looking for a position as an EMT. One of the things I like about it is that I know who is going to be reporting to my garage before they do so. One of the things I hate about it is the canned responses I get to subjective questions that have no real right answer. So it’s time to dispel one of those myths that persist over time.

The Myth

My interviews are always straight forward affairs. The first question I ask is where they went to EMT school, because believe it or not that does indicate how well you were (or weren’t) trained. The second question is about who the instructor was, because if you can remember their name then the chances are good that you remembered what they taught you. The third question is how you liked the class, a completely subjective inquiry with no real right answer.

The fourth question is another subjective inquiry asking why you became an EMT. There is no right or wrong answer, but you would be amazed (or maybe you wouldn’t be) at the number of candidates who ultimately feel that EMS is the answer because they want to “help people”. To be honest, the answer is one that I expect but at the same time I think it’s a myth that we continue to perpetuate in our current education models of both the untrained public as well as those starting out in the profession.

The Broader View

I help people everyday. The thing is not one of them goes to the hospital, nor do I fill out a call report for them, and very few of them have any medical issues. They are people who are inundated with packages or a linen cart going through a door, or they need to find the actual entrance of Madison Square Garden, or are completely lost and need to be pointed in the right direction to make their appointment on time. Considering the most common problems people seem to have, does it make you wonder whether you need to become an EMT or Paramedic in EMS to help people?

This job is not about helping people.

The Reality

This job is about changing lives.

We’re called to come and effect a positive change in a patient’s life during what may be their most worst moments of a medical crisis. The type of job we are able to do in effecting that change may be critical to their future and its quality, both immediate and long term.

We change lives everyday. Sometimes we change their life by bringing them to the hospital for necessary treatment, whether it be emergent or ambulatory, that will lead to less symptoms, complications, or pain. We have helped to effect change on their quality of life. Sometimes we change their life by bringing their family member home from the hospital, allowing a sense of normalcy to return. Sometimes we change their lives by providing hope (or the audacity of it) and other times we change them by being the bearer of grim news.

This job is about changing lives.

What Gets Left Untold

Yet it isn’t just the lives of the patients, their family, and their friends that get changed. Our lives get changed too. When I was originally writing this post over the weekend I inadvertently was leaving that little fact out and Kelly Grayson was kind enough to remind me of that fact.

Sure, we help people. We help people everyday. Yet sometimes we are so blinded by the notion that this job is about helping people, that we forget to help those who are most important to us as well as ourselves. It’s comedic tragedy at its finest.

This job is about changing lives. It’s about changing theirs as much as it is about changing our own. Some of that change will happen as a natural scientifically rooted fact, while other aspects of that change are within our grasp to shape and mold.

This is something we need to realize, and something we need to meet head on as both individuals and as a profession.