Demystifying your role for patients

When I speak with paramedics, whose roles are so rapidly evolving and diversifying, I am struck not only by the degree to which your roles vary, but by the assumption that other paramedics understand your role, despite the admission that, in many cases, you don't feel you understand theirs. Now I am guilty of this myself to some degree; I tend to assume everyone knows what an editor does; that is, until I speak to just about any human being that isn't one, and realise, no one actually has a clue. But in my case, editors tend to understand each other and what we do.

Paramedics on the other hand, tend to understand each other deeply, in a fundamental sense—when it comes to big things like the importance of clinical skills, the little things (which are really also the big things) like the importance of making a cuppa for Mrs Jones, and cultural things like a belief that the work you do isn't that big of a deal, and the use of humour (p.128) to help you believe that belief so you can actually cope day to day. But when it comes to the extremely varied roles paramedics fill, you aren't always clear on what other paramedics actually do.