At the very beginning of a career, like in your P-School internship, a good call is when you can do something paramedic-ish. IVs, meds, ECGs, and such makes for an ALS call. ALS calls are good calls. This leads to students looking for reasons to do paramedic-ey stuff, creating a habit of overtreatment that they will carry for years.
Later, in your first year or two, a good call is one in which you are challenged. At the beginning, that is a fairly high percentage of calls. You were seeing pathologies for the first time, trying to work out issues without a preceptor holding your hand, and maybe even performing procedures for the first time. You're challenged all the time. But after you find your legs and work out the basics of EMS, things settle down. After that, you are (or should be) challenging yourself - can you be faster, be more efficient, stuff like that.
In about the third year, there are no more good calls. You've seen stuff and your sangfroid has become overly developed. At first, the bored nonchalance was an act but now you're really comfortable and bored. But here's a secret. The calls didn't change; your definition of a good call stayed the same and you outgrew it. If your criteria for a "good" call is one in which you're challenged, but you have run somewhere between two- and three-thousand calls, it is harder to be challenged.
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| Still not a good call. (Public domain, Wikimedia Commons) |
From here, some medics burn out. Their definition of a good call is now unachievable, their mood declines, and so the smart ones realize a new career is in order. Switching to med school or a PA program returns the definition of good call - never seen it before, doing something for the first time, etc. The not-smart ones just descend into bitterness about not running good calls and their time being wasted.
The medics that don't burn out likely changed their definition of a good call to something achievable. They helped a patient, they taught someone something, they learned something new... whatever makes them happy and is an achievable goal.
1 comment:
Manson once told me his description of what makes a good call and it was not a grinder accident, numerous interventions performed, or anything similar to that. It was merely applying all of his education and training into the service of someone else to try and leave them better than he found them. That stuck with me and has remained part of my personal philosophy. Great blog, thanks for writing and glad to have you back on the streets.
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