subject: Ambulance Services Are Serious Work [print this page] Being responsible in any way for the emergency medical care of a person seems like a stressful job. For so many people I know the reminder that if they do their job wrong "no one will die" can feel like a gigantic relief. People on all levels of the medical profession from nurses and orderlies to doctors and surgeons can not be so sure of that anxiety assuaging fact. Instead if you have someone's life in your hands you have to make life or death decisions in real time with no backup plan. It is the bold and brave work that they make television shows and heroic news reports about. These are the most important workers around top to bottom. The people keeping our sick and injured alive and getting them through to the other side of a terrible situation.
One of the more unsung heroes in this chain of medical professionals are those responsible for providing ambulance services. Everyone from the dispatcher to the drivers themselves have a role to play that is distinct and meaningful. For all the people crying apathetically about their life having meaning there is a path to a meaningfully stressful job and it might be through your ability to drive and stay cool under pressure.
For the rest of us we can just be happy that there are such capable people currently working in the field of medical transportation. This is not just the driver but the person responsible for administering stabilizing care to the people being transported. Those people must have a wide range of knowledge about medical ailments, medical equipment, and a sense of urgency behind everything they do. These people are the backbone of medical transportation and that means they are responsible not just for getting patients to hospitals safely and quickly but then relocating those same patients to facilities that are better suited to their needs. They are also responsible for making people feel safe and have hope in terrible situations.
I am for one very impressed at anyone who works in an ambulance or some other form of medical transportation. These people are truly heroes for so many of us. There is hardly anyone among us who would be able to say that they knew no one helped by an ambulance. We have all been or heard about situations where critical care was needed and indeed the life of someone was truly on the line for a person working for an ambulance service. The very life of those stories, the very thing that makes them worth telling, is all thanks to the work of those working in the medical field at large and in medical transportation specifically.
