So, yesterday I blogged about the tragedy with the Fairfax County firefighter/paramedic who killed herself. The suicide is believed to have been connected to multiple workplace climate issues, including bullying.
I shared the blog yesterday on several EMS Facebook pages and several medics commented about similar experiences at their employer. One especially poignant comment was, “I always thought it was just me…”
Here’s the thing. When you have multiple people who don’t know each other, all from different fire and EMS organizations, all saying the same thing — it is cultural. It is pervasive. And it’s got to stop right now.
Humor, even some inappropriate humor, is an excellent form of coping with the stresses associated with service in the fire and EMS world. But we in the fire and EMS world don’t know how to do humor right. We mock and haze our colleagues. We mock our patients with sayings like “I’m not an ambulance driver, I’m a NASCAR driver sponsored by Medicare.” We mock education and advancement of the profession by denigrating “book learning” and wearing t-shirts that say, “Would you like to talk to the paramedic in charge or the EMT who knows what’s going on?” And when someone calls the jokesters out, they’re labeled as “butthurt.” Well, call me butthurt because this has got to stop.
The story about Fairfax County has made the news outside of the fire and EMS world. It will get into the hands of those with an agenda and the politicians. If we can’t clean up our own messes, the politicians will. And the solutions proposed by the politicians will be worse than the problem. If you don’t believe me, I submit Obamacare as an example of a solution from politics. If you don’t think that those who’d like to privatize fire or EMS services won’t use this as an example of how a private company with a good HR department wouldn’t have let this happen, then you haven’t been paying attention.
A friend of mine said, “If we can’t take care of our own, what makes me the public think we can take care of them?” That nails it right there. We can start taking of our own at our own stations and on our own rigs. And it starts right here, right now.
I am not sure if we understand the extent or depth of the problem in the culture that is costing organizations an enormous amount in human potential. When people opt out of a toxic workplace they take with them all of the value they might have contributed.
When the leaders of those organizations fail to recognize a problem exists and fail to take action to solve the problems I am not convinced the solutions proposed by politicians and regulators will be worse.
The current solutions of “do nothing” and “hope for the best” are not working.
What if it’s the employer themselves who are the ones doing the bullying? Who does the employee turn to then for help?