By Ariel Hansen
Times-News (Twin Falls, Idaho)
Copyright 2007 Times-News
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News
TWIN FALLS, Idaho — It’s their profession to deal with the horrendously graphic — the car wrecks that mangle, the industrial accidents that maim, the assaults that leave families broken.
It’s up to firefighters, paramedics and police officers to bring calm and proficiency to these situations. At tragedies that would leave others traumatized, their job is to be competent, focused, coolheaded.
But they’re human, and emotion is part of the human condition.
“When folks are having trouble, it’s a normal reaction to an abnormal event,” said Gordon Kokx, associate professor and EMS program director at the College of Southern Idaho. “It means you’re human and care about people.”
Each responder must deal with emotional stress in his own way, without letting it affect his job performance or his life at home. That can be nearly impossible on some shifts, especially when the victim was a child or the injuries were horrific.
So why do they do it every day?
“For every five bad calls, there’s one call where you made a difference,” said Blaine Patterson, emergency medical technician and paramedic with Magic Valley Paramedics. “When you’re feeling bad about the bad ones, you think back. That’s what helps you keep focused and on task.”
At the scene
Maintaining focus is one of the keys to being a first responder. Without it, a paramedic might be slow to remember the details of a specific medical procedure, or worse, might make a mistake.
“When we’re called to an incident we want to be part of the solution, not part of the problem,” said Vern Plott, station captain with the Twin Falls Fire Department. “If you break down or lose it, you become part of the problem.”
After the first few calls in a responder’s career — once the initial anxieties are smoothed by experience — there isn’t much that will rattle him. The exceptions? Calls about injured children or someone he knows personally.
Patterson can still remember the details of one of his more emotional calls. At the scene, he found a 2-year-old boy who looked twisted almost in half, with a piece of his skull missing, but still alive and screaming.
“It would have been a lot easier if he had been DOA,” Patterson said, using the shorthand for “dead on arrival.”
Patterson said it is harder to separate emotionally from calls involving children because they remind him of his own kids.
“The sign of a true professional is someone who can compartmentalize that,” Patterson said.
Developing that professionalism for first responders means taking to heart the notion that it isn’t their emergency. “You didn’t cause it, you’re there to help,” he said. “It takes a long time for people to develop that.”
After the emergency
For first responders, it is critical to set aside emotion when there’s a job to be done.
“If you’re going to fall apart, make sure it’s afterward,” Plott said. “If you don’t, these people that need your help are not going to get that help.”
But responders can’t compartmentalize forever.
“People can become sad and depressed, irritable and angry, wanting to be alienated, socially isolated,” Kokx said, if they bottle up their emotions. “These are things that sometimes end careers, so it’s important for people not to just tough it out, to seek professional help if they need it.”
Firefighters, paramedics and police officers have a coping mechanism in common: They talk to their co-workers.
“Every one of us has a mentor, someone who’s been there and done that,” Patterson said.
After most significant calls is a debriefing, usually held within a department, to discuss what went well and what could have been done differently. After major critical incidents, firefighters, paramedics and police officers sometimes get together to share information.
Going over the call, from the time the responders arrived to the time they cleared the scene, helps them process their experience.
“You’re thinking about the mechanics, but it helps you think about how you responded,” said Clint Doerr, a patrol officer with the Twin Falls Police Department.
Plott has an open-door policy at his fire station. The firefighters, after discussing the call, will often come to him to go over a procedure. More rarely, they’ll share their emotional reaction.
“If they want to talk about it, it will come out,” Plott said. “If one of my guys broke down and started crying, I wouldn’t think any less of him. If anything, it’s a release of what’s going on.”
When to release
The responders agreed that emotional releases in front of the public or at the scene of an incident are not appropriate. But breaking down in private seems to happen to everyone.
“I’ve thrown up right after an incident; I’ve sat in my car and cried,” said Rick Van Vooren, a patrol officer with the Twin Falls Police Department. “Of course, you don’t do that in front of the people you work with.”
It’s when there isn’t an emotional release, in private or with a close co-worker, that responders start to worry.
“You live with these guys 24 hours a day, and you get to know their quirks,” Plott said. “You can tell if they’re troubled or have problems.”
Professional help is available for all the first responders, though they said it isn’t used much. As a supplement to the workplace debriefings, many responders use physical activity and hobbies as a release.
“It’s good to let your body have some sort of physical activity, or diversion for your mind not to obsess with what you’ve been dealing with,” Kokx said. He advises his students to take up a hobby and exercise regularly.
Adrenaline release from exercising, Patterson said, “is your natural antidepressant.”
The first responders said alcohol, a depressant, doesn’t have any role in their process of dealing with emotion. Don’t believe that image of two police officers downing shots at the neighborhood bar after their shift, said Van Vooren and Doerr. But along with the firefighters and paramedics, they admitted to using dark humor — but only among peers.
“You always have to walk that line about what you say and do,” Kokx said. Humor can be an emotional release as long as it doesn’t become unprofessional. “It’s a defense mechanism, more than anything.”
All the first responders said they take pains to keep the emotional impact of what they do from their families, especially their children. And the confidential nature of many emergencies prevents them from discussing the details with spouses. Instead, they try to put aside the stress of the shift.
“When I see my kids and my wife, most of that dissolves away,” Doerr said.
Why they keep doing the job
Almost universally, first responders have chosen their careers because the work allows them to help people in crisis.
Providing that help can be an emotional low — from a fatal heart attack to a home lost to fire, from accidental injury to murder. But there are also highs — a paramedic delivering a baby, a firefighter stopping a blaze before it burns out a family, or a police officer catching a perpetrator.
“Solving the case up to the end, that’s the big rush,” Van Vooren said. “That makes it worth coming back the next day to see if you can do it again.”