Cup of tea and a chat? Get the kettle on…

Do you remember a time when after a ‘bad’ job control would return you to base to ‘re-stock’, have a cup of tea, and give you and your crew mate the opportunity to chat. Academic research has indicated that emergency workers have an increased risk of experiencing psychologically traumatic situations due to their profession, and that peer support following a traumatic call (and socialization into the role through our training and our culture) provides a ‘protective-like’ mechanism against chronic stress and/or stressful symptoms such as re-experiencing the incident through ‘fashbacks’, nightmares, and intense distress (Regher and Bober, 2005). Though occupational stress exposure has been found to be beneficial in enhancing wellbeing of ambulance staff, building up a level of resilience to stress via professional socialization, social support from peers, humour, and other personal factors, has been proven to enhance ambulance workers emotional and psychological mental state (Regehr and Millar, 2007; Alexander and Klein, 2001).