Message from a Paramedic

[Jenasaurus]

A message to the public: 20 reasons...from a paramedic.

1. to everyone slagging off the TikTok videos we do, bollocks. We are human, we have feelings and we get scared and upset too, the silly videos are morale boosting and team building, a crucial aspect when treating your loved ones in their time of need, without a way of letting off steam we would break, then who would care for your nearest and dearest?

1. We are not immune and are still at risk, yet we risk ourselves coming to treat you, paramedics get sick, paramedics die, and all to treat you, so please, don’t take the piss.

1. The freebies and incentives we get are ways to make us appreciated, it makes a change from being punched on a job or spat at, so just let us enjoy them.

1. We are not part of some government conspiracy theory. We are not selecting who gets sick, neither do we want to implant you for control. If we were going to be selective, we certainly wouldn’t be choosing ‘Karen or Susan , who attended the school of life’ and got her medical knowledge from fb. (Sorry Karen/Susan)

1. If you’ve called because you think you’ve got covid, chances are you probably have, as everyone is suspected now, there is always a transmission path, however; it doesn’t mean your going to die.

1. Please look after yourself! If you can google an array of other symptoms and watch the death toll avidly on a variety of sources I’m sure you can figure out to take paracetamol for a temperature, drink fluids, take immodium for diarrhoea, and rest. You don’t need us to tell you that.

1. We don’t do ‘check overs’. That’s what your gp does. We offer life saving treatment in situations beyond your control. Please choose wisely.

1. We don’t have amazing PPE, we have what the PHE has told us to wear, and be that right or wrong it’s all we’ve got. The same as nurses, gp’s, carers, porters, Dom staff and other key workers. Please don’t think we’re ‘ok’.

1. We like the clapping. It makes us emotional, even the hard faced staff, makes us feel proud to do our job, and yes, we probably are stood close to each other outside a hospital, but we also are inside when performing cpr and airway resuscitation, remember that when you have a moan that we don’t adhere to social distancing.

10. We are separated from our families too, just like you are, we miss our mums, dads, our sisters and brothers, our nieces and nephews, even our children, and we HATE it. But we do it to protect them. It’s not about us.

11. We are bored in lockdown too, on our few days off, we spend so much time seeing Poorly people, coming home to the same 4 walls it is driving us crazy, but we do it, to protect you. Please do the same, otherwise you will be doing it for longer.

12. We get angry at the news, at politicians, and at social unrest, however we keep our lips sealed, as much as we want to shout like you do, but we don’t, as when we see you, our issue at that moment in time, is reassuring you and helping you.

13. We are proud of the people who listen to advice, don’t break the rules, we thank you, and every Thursday, we clap for you too.

14. We don’t test for covid, shit, some of us aren’t even tested! Please stop asking us, that includes asking ‘if we think you’ve got it’ without a swab, we are clueless.

15. Enjoy the time with your family, we wish we could, everyday we go to work it makes us sad to be away from them, so make the most of it, have fun doing home school, but if you miss a day, who cares?! It’s the memories that count.

16. Please stop calling us ambulance drivers. It really does make us rage. We actually went to uni, have a degree, and some even more than that. Also, yes, women drive too.

17. If you think you need to be in hospital but we don’t, we will try to help as much as we can, however don’t be surprised if we don’t take you. Hospitals are a risky place at the minute, and we are trying to help you by not taking you.

18. Please stop wearing a mask when your in the car on your own. You look a right berk and can’t catch it if no one is there.

19. To the elderly: you break our hearts at the minute, it’s a scary place right now, and seeing us tower over you in masks, taking you away from what you know upsets us too, we just want to say sorry.

20. (Most of us) love our job. Please don’t make us hate it, by going against the rules and common sense, we are working to help you. Every patient that is sick, every patient who splatters us in sick,blood and poo, and every patient who puts us at risk, we are still there, if you need us don’t be sorry, medical care is what we do. But please, from all of us, stay indoors, wash your hands, and keep clapping

Who the heck are 'we'?

Message from a member of the public:

WE are all the same people we were before the virus hit. Some people are wankers and some people are lovely. Wearing a uniform or having a degree or being old doesn't effect which is which.

These screeds of hectoring, 'bollocks' text are so tiresome. You know what I'd like, that people would stop addressing users on here like they are at a public meeting. It's insufferable.

Why not all pile on to the OP like piranhas having a feeding frenzy

All OP has done is copy some random list from Facebook. She didn't write this.

If you think you need to be in hospital but we don’t, we will try to help as much as we can, however don’t be surprised if we don’t take you. Hospitals are a risky place at the minute, and we are trying to help you by not taking you.

Tell that to the people who've requested an ambulance, not been taken to hospital and then died.

I have to agree with this take. Also, no one person speaks for everyone in any given profession. I hate these forwards.

Fairly fucking insensitive post.

I’m almost embarrassed for those people who lap this shit up.

I'm sorry but I hate these things.

Message from everyone else: we fully appreciate the job that you do and understand that it's really shit.

Everyone is finding lockdown hard. From the people who are worried about losing their jobs, homes, loved ones, to the people isolated in shit circumstances, to people working from home and struggling, to the children who are cut off from social life and schooling, to all the other people who work in public facing jobs.

Fairly fucking insensitive post.

I screwed up the quoting, and because I can't edit ... this belonged to the quoted post, and I agree with this, too.

But I'm not about to pay £50 for and edit button.

*My response:

1. There are 29,000 paramedics in the UK, is the author of this sanctimonious twaddle some sort of spokesperson?

1. The Tiktok stuff is naff and would be a disciplinary offence in a lot of workplaces. As would the paramedic's SM post.

1. "Enjoy the time with your family". Show some imagination, this is not a fucking holiday and putting a lot of families into crisis.

1. I can just about tolerate the lockdown but what makes it in intolerable is being preached to by anonymous healthcare people*

Agree with this.

Many people are separated from their families at the moment. People are worried about their futures and many have either been furloughed or lost their jobs. Fuck off with the preaching. Healthcare workers (yes I am one) do not have the monopoly on suffering, stress or even hard work.

And as to 'it doesn't doesn't matter where it comes from'. That is one of the first things you should ask yourself when you see random posts on Facebook etc. One of the basic elements of critical thinking.

Not every paramedic will agree with you on every point you've made. For example, some like some think the clapping is stupid. Just like not every general member of the public is an idiot as you've made out here.

I don't believe this is really from a paramedic.
If it is, it is excessively hostile and unprofessional.

I think the issue is that this was posted as if written by OP, then only later when asked it said written by a colleague.
Written by a colleague....do you personally know that colleague?
I have lots of colleagues across different offices that I dont personally know. out of all of them, I only know a handful of their names.
As PP said, is the person that wrote this a spokesperson for all paramedics in the UK? I'm sure that not all paramedics have the same opinion as the person who wrote this.

Hmm healthcare workers in the UK are absolutely vital and must be appropriately valued, but nobody likes preachy.

If you’ve called because you think you’ve got covid, chances are you probably have, as everyone is suspected now, there is always a transmission path, however; it doesn’t mean your going to die.
Hmm, actually I think something like 85% tests are negative aren’t they?

Meanwhile, from The Times:

NHS in London has altered its official guidance to lower the threshold at which paramedics take suspected coronavirus patients to hospital.London Ambulance Service (LAS) has changed how it uses a scorecard called News2, which helps assess whether callers to 999 are at risk of deteriorating. The disclosure is likely to prompt questions over whether some Covid-19 patients became seriously unwell or died because they were not taken to hospital before the guidance changed. News2 allocates a score to vital signs including breathing rate, oxygen saturation, temperature, blood ....From March 12 paramedics in the capital were told that suspected Covid-19 patients scoring as high as six might not need to be hospitalised. The guidance was then changed on April 10 to advise that people scoring between three and five should be taken in for assessment. LAS declined to say whether the change had been influenced by concerns that patients might have become seriously ill or died. It stressed that its previous guidance had been only one of several clinical assessments used by medics on the scene. The scoring system was never used in isolation, it added, and clinical judgment always took precedence. The revelation will add to fears that some patients have only reached hospital when they are already critically ill. Yesterday a study by the Intensive Care National Audit & Research Centre revealed that two-thirds of Covid-19 patients who had needed a ventilator died. Of 4,078 NHS intensive care patients where an outcome was known, 2,067 died and 2,011 were discharged. That equates to a mortality rate of 50.7%

1. There are 29,000 paramedics in the UK, is the author of this sanctimonious twaddle some sort of spokesperson?

2. The Tiktok stuff is naff and would be a disciplinary offence in a lot of workplaces. As would the paramedic's SM post.

3. "Enjoy the time with your family". Show some imagination, this is not a fucking holiday and putting a lot of families into crisis.

4. I can just about tolerate the lockdown but what makes it in intolerable is being preached to by anonymous healthcare people.

Worth reposting a third time. Agree with every word.

What goes on Facebook should stay on Facebook.

Unless it's pictures of cats.

The priorities seem to be about tik tok, freebies and clapping. It makes me feel quite uncomfortable reading this. It’s got a very condescending tone, I also don’t like the Karen/Susan stuff. Stop posting rubbish off Facebook as fact.

Do trained paramedics really have such poor punctuation and grammar?

Absolutely no fucking need. At all.

What a load of nauseating, patronising, sexist, condescending tripe.

One of the paramedics I know is a class A moron who doesn't stay at home to protect the nhs who they fucking work for instead they meet up with other households coz they iz special like.

Just sounds like he's talking down to us like we are dumb.

Ofcourse they deserve a free coffee. Ofcourse they are amazing. We appreciate everything they do. People are allowed to be scared and ask them for an opinion. We know without tests they can't say for sure but it's natural to ask!

I don't mind seeing them having a dance. Although where I live my friend from schools mum did the cha cha slide and something else this week. So she's made two videos so far dancing at the ambulance station.... But I remember her as being a right misery when we were all growing up. All she did was snap at her kids. She never smiled. She was always irritated. Infact she never used to even smile at any of us or say hello. She must have had a personality transplant because we all used to think she was miserable and scary 😂😂😂

I think the NHS is amazing anyway. Well the staff are! Before the pandemic they were a great bunch of people.

I think at first clapping and stuff made us all teary and proud. But we've done it several times now and people just are bored of it. We are all bored of the limitations.

I don't think one paramedic can express the thought of all paramedics. They are ambulance drivers too. One drives the ambulance and the other is in the back caring for the patient. Not sure why it's an insult. Especially as a way to explain to children.

sorry OP but this is sanctimonious bollocks. Even the title is cringe.
Yes, being a paramdedic is an important and worthy job. But one person cannot speak for a whole profession. Also - this way of speaking to "us" on MN as if we are a homogenous bunch in the same way the post suggests paramedics are. I'm a nurse and have met some wonderful paramedics and some right arseholes too (same as nurses, doctors, physios, radiographers, porters......). I don't need to be preached at by someone who isn't even giving out good advice!!

@CallmeAngelina

FFS, what IS it with you lot?
Are you going to be this unpleasantly picky if you need the OP to pick you up in their ambulance?

Do you know OP? How do you know they are ambulance crew?

Are you going to be this unpleasantly picky if you need the OP to pick you up in their ambulance

Actually yes I am. I had to argue with the paramedics to take someone in just recently and they didnt want to. After checking their vitals they admitted they needed to go in and they had life saving treatment.
If I hadn't been "picky" that person would have died.....

I always wonder if these sort of things are reverse psych deep state conspiracy stuff surely they realise how badly it plays?

Maybe there is a target audience & I’m just not it! I’m always left thinking what a stupid wanker rather than oh marvellous frontline heroes ... hence the reverse psych (I’m joking btw - sadly).