“Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.”
No truer words can be said for this paramedic from Russia, who must have hated herself so much that she thought nothing of posing for selfies in front of her patients, and making comments that were, let’s say, in poor taste.
It seems technology has become a global burden in the way we communicate. The ability to instantly tell the world what you’re thinking or doing at that exact moment is quite a powerful temptation to do exactly that – and make yourself an idiot in no time flat.
And the idiots have a huge audience. Peruse through Facebook groups, Twitter feeds and Vine accounts and some of the most popular sites have the word “fail” somewhere in the title.
We love the perverse, the schadenfreude - the pleasure derived from the misery of others. It’s like watching the proverbial train wreck - we can’t help but watch.
Somewhere along the way, we lost track of common sense, common decency and common courtesy. Especially in our business, where dealing with misery of all kinds is a just another day’s work, not being able to understand where harmless fun begins, and rude, sometimes illegal or immoral begins is a dangerous place to be. Ask the EMS providers and firefighters who have lost jobs over poor choices in what to text, tweet or post.
Free speech is not free. It comes with responsibility and accountability. You might consider that the next time you want to post your rant to the ether. No doubt you’ll find an audience for it; it just might not be the folks you intended.
A fellow EMS instructor once told me the way he explains “PTT” on a hand-held radio is that it stands for “Push to Talk,” not “Push to Think.” When we communicate on our radios, we need to be clean, unambiguous and professional. The same should go for our posts as well. Remember that our communities, all around the world, would like to think their EMS providers are professionals who care about their patients. Just one terrible tweet and that can all go up in smoke just as fast as that missive went viral.
