Paramedics wrote the book on job stress

'You have to be ready to handle anything... '

Some jobs never quite let go of you. Paramedic is one of those.

Each time the alarm sounds at stations across the Treasure Valley, paramedics jump in their ambulances and thread their way through traffic with sirens screaming and lights flashing.

"You’re never going to know what you’ll be doing in five minutes in this job," said Troy Hagen, director of Ada County Paramedics. "You have to be ready to handle anything that might come across in the course of your shift."

And what they find in the course of their 12- or 24-hour shifts might be routine and easy — a family member who dialed 911 for an elderly parent who turned out to be OK. Or it might be the worst — children drowned, shaken into brain damage, or maimed or killed in accidents.

The job is stressful enough that the paramedics keep a psychologist on a retainer to do seminars and to see individual paramedics sent home after particularly wrenching calls, Hagen said.

Nationwide, paramedics last little more than five years in their jobs before they flame out and move on. Boise does better, partly because it lacks the constant stream of violence and accidents of large urban areas, but it still has a share of new trainees who quickly change their minds about their job choice.

Paramedics can’t control the calls they go on, or the conditions of the people they treat. What they can control, with practice, is their emotions. That, in turn, lowers their job stress. The No. 1 key to job success is emotional distance. They need that, sometimes reinforced with a dose of black humor, as much as they need the people skills to deal compassionately with people in crisis.

"Our mentality for emergency responders is that this is the patient’s emergency that we are responding to and trying to help them," Hagen said. "Don’t make it your emergency, or you’ll burn out."

Most paramedics have administered intensive medical aid under horrific circumstances: toddlers floating in swimming pools or swept down canals; a teenager trampled to death by her horse as her father veered out of control in his grief; suicides; disfiguring accidents. The emotional distance is hardest to maintain if victims are children and paramedics have children who are about the same age.

The job also has its rewards — pulling people from the brink of death, including a girl who lay without breathing in a pool of blood in the road after rolling her car. Paramedic Andrea Cobler lived across the street, and she was home. She kept the girl’s airway open until help arrived. When the patient got married, Cobler was invited to the wedding. She was shy about going, because Cobler sees what she did as just her job.

Sometimes, the job is just about waiting and wondering what’s next. That’s what Cobler and fellow Ada County paramedic Kate Schabot do during lulls.

Schabot and Cobler waited late one afternoon in the station for calls from Ada County dispatchers. The pair were at Station 52, off Victory Road between Maple Grove and Cole roads. It has a living room with a TV, a kitchen, three bedrooms and an office.

The first call took the racing ambulance to a well-kept, ranch-style house where someone dialed 911 because a woman had heavy vaginal bleeding, possibly a hemorrhage.

The elderly woman had been eating dinner when blood began gushing, she told Schabot. A spot of blood remained on the carpet as paramedics loaded her into the ambulance. The woman was shaking all over.

"Are you just real scared?" Schabot asked her. "Yes, yes."

That patient had a good attitude, but injured people react in unexpected ways. Some get angry about going to the hospital and have to be restrained. "It’s been hard for me not to take that home," Schabot said.

Families also can be unpredictable. Cobler remembers one woman in particular who "grabbed me by the coat and tried to throw me up the stairs," Cobler said.

Sometimes, paramedics who ride with numb family members can see the families’ faces change as the enormity of the injury hits them. "In America, you just expect miracles," Cobler said. Paramedics understand, but their jobs have taught them that life doesn’t always turn out like we expect.