In slate.com's podcast on working, David Plotz interviews flight paramedic Jeff Ennis. Jeff is part of a three member team also including a pilot and a nurse. He works interesting shifts, 24 hours on then 24 off, then 24 on again followed by 5 days off. He says a lot of prep work goes into all of his shifts, both personally and professionally. Personally he prepares meals and gets a lot of sleep so he will be able to function fully during his time on the job, Professionally the crew checks everything about the aircraft before each shift. It is a very high stress job, but he seems to perform it well. He said that after receiving a call it takes the crew about eight minutes to get in the air. He mostly deals with very sick and very injured people. One patient he told about was suffering from cardiac arrest and would continually lose his pulse randomly throughout his trip to the cardiac specialists. Regardless of this, the crew was still able to get the patient stable and in the air in only 18 minutes.
This definitely seems like a job that someone would have to love in order to do it. The shifts are long and very high stress. I don't believe that I could do this job mostly because I couldn't be on call for 24 hours. Also it would be tough work to deal with only the most seriously injured and ill patients.
Questions:
Are there any limits on what he can do during his time off?
Can he sleep at all during his shifts?
How does he feel about the patients he can't save?
Mike,
ReplyDeleteI thought the same thing about saving patients. I wonder how often he loses the patients before he can even get there or while he's trying to get them to the hospital? And how much of an emotional attachment can he make with these people in such a short amount of time?
Mike,
ReplyDeleteI was thinking the along the same lines for what he can and can't do when he's off duty. It makes me wonder if they could call him in at anytime in case of a large emergency and therefore he could not travel far or do anything to impair his ability to work.
Also, to answer your question about if he could sleep during his shift, he said that any down time he has between emergencies he will try and catch a little bit of sleep.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteI agree. I definitely could not do this job if it was not something I loved. The shifts are crazy long and I just don't think I could personally handle it. I also don't know how I would deal with all the stress that comes along with the job itself.
Mike,
ReplyDeleteI disagree with you when you say that you wouldn't be able to do this job. I believe anyone who loves their job enough would be able to work as many hours as it took, at least I know I would. Plus, after he works the 2 24 hour shifts, he gets 5 DAYS OFF. That's a lot of free time that anyone would enjoy. Personally, I would prefer hours such as this compared to the standard 5 day 40 hours a week job.
Good stuff. No response to the question about emotion, though. You do mention that you'd have to love the job, and that's the weird thing. You have to love the job and the people, but Ennis basically says you also can't love them too much or you'll get hurt.
ReplyDeleteGrade: .9/1
Hi guys, I'm Jeff! If you have any questions beyond what I talked about in the podcast you can e-mail me at rivermedic528@gmail.com. I have enjoyed reading these blog posts I was wondering how you guys found out about the podcast. Was this a school assignment?
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