“The Ceiling”

Paramedic: On The Front Lines of Medicine by Peter Canning, pages 123-124, The Ceiling. “Failure haunts me.”Says Peter Canning.

 I cannot speak for any other EMT-Basic but I can speak for myself when I say failure, too, haunts me. I can’t tell you how many nights I spent staring at the ceiling worry and thinking about what I am preparing for and things I’ve already seen and how it has affected me. 

            By the very first day of EMT school I was completely overwhelmed, as I’ve mentioned in a previous post, by the amount of information I was going to have to plug into over the next three months. Becoming an EMT is a big deal, not something one should take lightly. People’s lives will be in YOUR hands, that is a heavy responsibility…I began questioning myself if I could truly do it. I am now out of EMT school and preparing to venture into the real world as an EMT-Basic actually working for an agency. But I chose to stick it out and this is the day I told myself “failure is not an option.”

            During EMT school I had the opportunity to sit in at the dispatch center to see how they do things on their end. (I recommend taking any opportunities to observe ALL areas of emergency services such as paramedic services, fire departments, police departments, ER and dispatch observation.) I sat with dispatch on two separate occasions, as I’ve mentioned before, and on the first sit in the dispatcher beside myself and dispatcher Molly Stock* a call came in that was chilling. I was able to read on our screen what the EMTs were seeing on scene and I was also able to see what the dispatcher beside us was saying back to them while she spoke to a frantic father on the phone.

            “Pt is obviously dead.” Read across the screen three separate times, written by EMTs on scene. The only time an EMT can pronounce a death is when it is obvious such as decapitation, a severed body, rigor mortis, or signs of lividity. 

            I hear the dispatcher beside us trying to calm the frantic father down and speaking in a calm but remorseful tone in her voice. “Ok, I’m going to let you go now, go call your wife.” I continue to read the screen. “Father found daughter had shot herself in the head.” “Pt was 14 years old.” 

            This call haunted me for weeks afterward. It seemed to really hit me at night right before I went to sleep. I was having trouble falling asleep and would stare at the ceiling thinking about that call. What must have been so bad in her life for her to do such a thing? Are her parents also having trouble sleeping reliving that moment they found out their daughter had perished? I felt a sense of guilt as if I could have helped her, saved her in some way. Days after the call I was watching the obituary section just wanting to see her face and to learn a little more about her.