Along with a majority of other paramedics working as part of one of the many UK ambulance trusts, this author spent a significant part of January feeling excessively grumpy and irate at the press—namely, certain pieces of unfair journalism that failed to account for both sides of an argument. But then, being a paramedic, the author is biased and it comes as no surprise that they would call it unfair.
Working in a fairly busy corner of England, the discomfort of having late or no meal breaks during a shift are commonplace, and they have been since the author of this piece graduated. Of course, in-service moaning about the meal break issue is quite understandable, and, as paramedics we all do it.
The author came into this job knowing this might be the case on certain occasions (it is not like it's a new phenomenon), but for our right for a meal break to be reported as an excuse for bad practice is unreasonable in its portrayal of the service and, the author feels, completely unsatisfactory. While this raises the issue of breaks for emergency staff, and the associated human rights and policies, the author thinks the underlying issue here is to do with the reporting media. Jim Morrison famously said, ‘whoever controls the media controls the mind’ and the author thinks this statement is perhaps more applicable in today's society than when it was in the 1960's when he said it. Though freedom of speech is important, in today's blame culture such freedom of speech can, on occasion, promote outrage and indignation at the drop of a hat—on this occasion, it was at the expense of our profession.
Strangely, it was only in last month's editorial for the Journal of Paramedic Practice did Pete Gregory warn that our failure to act as a profession could open us up to coverage by investigative journalism (Gregory, 2013). In this respect it is likely that we are even more unfortunate than most because we are, essentially, a reactively young profession, (wherein some specifics such as entry levels for registration are still up for debate). However, the author really does think we are fortunate to have a growing representative body in The College of Paramedics, that was able to meet the aforementioned article with a response, and what was more, a further retort when there was no immediate answer from the agencies involved trying to justify their initial position.
‘…for our right for a meal break to be reported as an excuse for bad practice is completely unreasonable in its portrayal of the service.‘
In this way, the college has provided support and encouragement to ambulance clinicians across the country and has highlighted that, while our profession may still be young, paramedics are now in an established and sufficiently consoldated position from which to answer back whenever we feel that our profession is being unfairly portrayed or represented in the media.
But how do we stop such an occurrence from happening again? It was clear that all of us felt deeply affronted by this most recent attack on the ambulance service, and media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have, in the main, been the hosts of a wide range of responses from both ambulance clinicians and the general public alike, but still this author wonders whether this is the most appropriate platform for expression? While a majority of public responses seemed to support and respect our job role, there still appeared to be the misinformed few that encouraged pessimism, calling for major job losses and reform. This author believes that the only way to combat this is for the public to become aware of our profession, our capabilities as practitioners and the furthermore the parameters in which we practice. This is not a battle that can be won by tweets or status updates, it needs to be done professionally, with a clear spokesperson speaking for, and heeding to all views across the profession. We already have that spokesperson in our representing body.
‘This is not a battle that can be won by tweets or status updates, it needs to be done professionally, with a clear spokesperson speaking for all views across the profession…‘
The clearest way the author think this can be established is if that representing body, the College of Paramedics, is offered more support from the professionals it is set up to serve. How can we expect our representing body to support us, if we don't support it?