By Susan Edelman and Ginger Adams Otis
The New York Post

New York, N.Y. — Two goofball emergency medical technicians played Chatroulette — and lost. The pair had goofed around in their gas masks and flirted with girls in online chat rooms inside their ambulance between 911 emergency assignments — and posted photos of it online — before getting fired for their capers.

Medics Ben Duchac and Franco Colon of the Long Island College Hospital EMT corps took pictures of their antics. And Duchac posted the images on the photo-sharing Web site Flickr.

The EMTs were in their parked ambulance when they signed on to the Web site ChatRoulette, in which random strangers chat. One of the images shows a laptop screen chat between a sexy brunette and the two medics wearing their gas masks.

Full Story: Jest pains: EMTs axed for on-job ‘Net antics

Living our EMS lives in the public eye

By Art Hsieh

I’ve been watching with interest these types of stories as well as the comments being made on various social networks by fellow EMS providers.

With this particular matter, three things come immediately to mind:

1) Whether we like it or not, EMS professionals are part of the public safety fabric that the public believes to protect them. If someone calls for a medical emergency, he or she expects a prehospital professional to come quickly and take care of them with compassion and competency. In another words, we are held in the public’s trust.

In many ways it doesn’t matter what we believe ourselves to be, whether we are entitled to privacy, or if we are subject to similar standards of conduct ascribed to other safety professionals. It takes nothing, literally, to damage the public’s trust in its EMS providers.

While this particular outcome may or may not be appropriate to the crime, the first question I ask is this: Why do it in the first place? And second: Why record your deed so it becomes public and not remain private?

2) Any sense of privacy that surrounded the activity was lifted as soon as it was posted to the Web. And unlike just sharing a fun moment with your partner or your crew, sharing it with thousands sorta eliminates the privacy of the moment. Remember the rule: whatever you desire to do or say, do you want your mother/father/spouse/child to see/hear it?

3) I’m not sure if the punishment fits the crime; I wasn’t there and don’t know that system’s policies and procedures regarding behavior in the workplace. However, I do know that I was a tad embarrassed when a non-EMS friend forwarded this to me with the caption, “Really?” I frankly didn’t respond to her. What could I really say?

I admit I’m a bit old fashioned — after all, I am over 40! — and I still believe that my actions as an EMS provider reflect on my colleagues around the country. I can only hope that others in EMS uniforms feel the same. Sometimes I am disappointed.

Art Hsieh, MA, NREMT-P, is Chief Executive Officer & Education Director of the San Francisco Paramedic Association, a published author of EMS textbooks and a national presenter on clinical and education subjects.