working with people that are burned out. ..

[titmouse]

Not cool. Once my partner for today shift said "I :censored: hate this place" I knew it would go down hill from there. We had an ift that was maybe about 10 miles distance, and since the facility had the same name as the other and the street numbers we similar I ended up going to the one thats about 20 miles away. What bothers me is that when I read the address to the wrong facility he didn't correct me, apparently so we can waste time... I understand what it means to be burned out, I was burned out at my last place of employment but I would still do my job and help my coworkers.... lesson learned and it was not cool.

 

[titmouse]

How do you deal with them?

 

[DesertMedic66]

Get a new partner as soon as possible haha. I hate working with burnt out medics and EMTs. I'm part time at work so I will pick up shifts with medics that I get along with

 

[Agent Cooper]

My very first ride-along was with an extremely burned-out medic. He did everything from calling the population he served "animals" (twice!) to telling a stabbing victim he was just full of it. As soon as I walked in, he gave me a speech about how he wished he had taken another path, that the :censored: you see just eats away at you until there's nothing left. He was clearly a pretty unhappy dude. It was pretty shocking to me at the time and I briefly questioned my EMS life-choice, because I didn't want to end up like that.

Having worked with burned-out people in other professions (like disaster relief) I think the best thing you can do (if you can't get a new partner) is do your best not to let it affect how you do your job, and try not to let it be contagious. One thing I've noticed, at least in disaster relief, is that burn-out can be really contagious, as the unhappy person in turn makes everyone around them unhappy.

 

[BSE]

How to deal with it? With great difficulty.

Here's the rub. There are bad medics and there are burnt-out medics. Many bad medics hide under the guise of being burnt-out to simply to hide the fact that they are crappy medics. I've seen this many times. It's difficult to tell the difference sometimes.

Even if someone is burnt-out, once they get in front of a patient, it should be "game-on". I'm not saying they are obligated to be "nice", but they should be somewhat professional and medically competent.

On the other hand, folks who are soooo burnt-out that they feel the need to let everyone know as soon as they meet them, should be avoided if possible. I have found that folks like this tend to be crappy/dangerous medics.

How do you deal if you are stuck? Hard call if the person is senior to you....find a way to get away. If you see something blatantly dangerous, call them out....in private at first.

 

[titmouse]

What bothers me the most is that I am still in probation and do not want to make dumb mistakes like that. But I guess in the end it was my bad for getting the pager and acquiring the address myself... Well at least I have learned what to do from now on. And yeah of you like your job, quit LOL

 

[Clare]

At least he is honest!

Sounds like it's time for him to slip off into Patient Transfer Service land and drive Nana around, or at least that's the "out" for burnt out ambos here!

 

[Hunter]

At least he is honest!

Sounds like it's time for him to slip off into Patient Transfer Service land and drive Nana around, or at least that's the "out" for burnt out ambos here!

Clare that's already where he works.


Mouse, unfortunately you will get a lot of people like that, specially where you live, there's a lot of people who have been working ift for years and are burnt out because they can't seem to get a 911 job. They're wanna be fire fighters who never got an opportunity, or :censored::censored::censored::censored:ed it up when they did. They're the ones who had the knight in shining armor idea when they got into EMS. My best advice specially since I'm in your area and I know what you're talking about; Ignore them, do your job, do your job to the best of your ability and if you feel like they're gonna get you in trouble, let them know. Tell them "Hey I know you hate your life and your very easy and very simple job that other people would love to have, but I don't either do it right or I can call the supervisor." It won't make you a lot of friends, and some of them will get pissed off, but they aren't exactly the kinda friends you wanna have anyways.

P.S. I figured out the best way to deal with the Job is to run your calls, don't run them faster and you won't piss off your partner, don't bag them and you won't piss off dispatch. Just my .02

 

[Veneficus]

It is hard to be the basic on a rig with a burned out medic.

Generally there is nothing you can do that will make them happy. Especially if there is a group of burned out medics that feed off of each other at your place.

I once worked with a burned out medic in nursing school, talk about a nightmare, the word from the grape vine was she didn't make a whole lot of friends in her nursing class either with the seen it all, done it all, you are not the responsible for sick patients attitude.

There was nothing that could be done. Believe me not for lack of trying. But generally I found some success with just offering to take all of the BLS calls. Which translated into most of the calls because she would look for reasons to turf them to me.

Some time later when I became a medic, If I had to work with a burned out partner, medic or basic, usually I just offered up running all the calls if they promised to drive.

It worked out really well. the burnt out medics I worked with were never eager to drive lights and sirens, had no urgency to them at all, and would clean and restock the gear in minutes so they could go back to chain smoking while I wrote up the paperwork.

It was nothing short of telling them that Christmas had come early and they were getting everything on their list.

As others have said though, generally, try to avoid them. Dispair is infectious and their problems are so deep rooted that no amount of outside help is going to solve them. They are also a risk to get rid of for management for a number of reasons. Generally I have observed the management stategy is to just make them miserable or let them be miserable until they quit.

 

[Action942Jackson]

Not everything is unicorns and rainbows. Just sayin.

 

[DrParasite]

the biggest problem with burnt out people is they are senior people, so all too often that attitude is picked up by the new people, who want to be cool like the senior people, and the attitude spreads like cancer.

I've been both the burnt out one and the one dealing with the burnout. One time I was working with a burnout, and I told him, point blank, "if you don't like your job, and you don't like working here, go somewhere else. if you are that good, you should have plenty of options. But until you do, we have a job to do, so quit *****ing and lets get through this shift."

after realizing how bad my attitude was becoming, I took a job in a different agency, in a different division, which made things a little better. Oddly enough, my former partner has since left that job as well, and accepted a FT and PT job at two different professional urban EMS agencies, and he keeps bugging me to apply to his new FT job so we can work together again.