A subscriber to JPP emailed me this summer wanting to cancel her subscription after having to remove herself from the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) register—she said she had recognised that remaining in the paramedic profession was detrimental to her mental health. She wrote of her disappointment to be cancelling her subscription, and of her grief to be leaving the profession she loves.
The news seems rampant with stories of verbal and physical abuse towards ambulance clinicians—and I've spoken with paramedics who believe that this is just a part of their job. I understand that in cases of mental illness, some cases are somewhat difficult to prevent but abuse should never just be tolerated as a part of the job. Employers have a responsibility to protect their staff, and governments have a responsibility to enact legislation that will protect our emergency workers. I am encouraged that the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Bill, which will be covered in further detail in our October issue, has passed through the Houses of Commons and Lords, and is now awaiting Royal Assent to become an Act of Parliament.
However, in addition to abuse from the public, and even from colleagues—both of which are unacceptable—the job of a paramedic comes with difficult experiences. Not only is your scope of practice continually expanding, requiring an increasing knowledge base and skill set, but the nature of the work itself requires you to care for people, to regularly witness some of the darker parts of human nature, to try and save people's lives, and sometimes not to succeed.
One of our student columnists recently wrote about her first experience of a death while attending a cardiac arrest as a first-year student. During the debrief, she voiced that it was her first death—but was not offered an opportunity to discuss it further. She wrote: ‘I then found it difficult to navigate out of that void of feelings, which I presumed was down to not being accustomed to the career’ (Chapman, 2018).
World Suicide Prevention Day takes place on 10 September. Mental health charity, Mind (2016), notes that one in four emergency service workers has thought about ending their lives—and sadly, we often hear stories of paramedics who have done just that, sometimes after attempts to seek support have failed. The part of me that is acutely aware of this felt glad to hear from our subscriber who may have saved her life by leaving the profession; yet she shouldn't have had to—she should have been supported.
The other piece of this puzzle is what you can do to help yourself. A woman who runs around the track outside my flat every day told me something remarkable last week when I commended her for her dedication. She said she works at a mental health facility and her employer requires staff to engage in daily exercise in order to ‘keep hold of their own mental faculties in the face of the challenging circumstances they deal with’. Slightly tyrannical maybe, but it really is brilliant. It drives home just how urgent it is for people who do a mentally challenging job to have an outlet. And while your job can negatively impact your health, your health can also positively impact your job. So what can you do differently to offer yourself some support?