40 Years and Counting: Show Me The Professionals

Ed’s Note: As part of our 40th anniversary celebrations, Mike Smith shares his thoughts on his 40 years in EMS.

During my travels, as I interface with EMS instructors around the country, one of the recurring themes I have seen over the past couple of years is that of professionalism. When all is said and done, there are but two main elements of professionalism: behavior and appearance. You either act in accordance with the standards of the profession or you do not. Additionally, you either dress like a professional or you do not. For most folks, these two elements of professionalism go hand in hand—looking the look and walking the walk.

When it comes to professional behavior, it’s not as simple as telling a newly graduated EMT-Basic to “act like a professional,” and magically expect professional behavior to appear. Where would a young person turn to find professional behavior worth emulating? From sports professionals? Doubtful, at best. In recent years, the stories of cheating in one form or another, such as blood doping, steroid or human growth hormone use/abuse or the use of other performance enhancing drugs seems to be never-ending.

Maybe our young people should look to business professionals as role models. Once again, unscrupulous business practices seem to be the rule rather than the exception. Taxpayer bailouts of the auto industry, the banking industry and the real estate industry are all events that are secondary to behaviors that should be avoided not emulated.

With such a glaring lack of acceptable professional behaviors to draw upon, we seem to be left with but one choice: professional role modeling within the EMS profession itself. I believe that we each need to make a concerted effort to continually exhibit professional behavior, which can be distilled to two basic elements: be competent and be nice.

Paralleling the issue of professional behavior is that of professional appearance. As a mentor who entered my life early on in my EMS career once told me, "If you show up for a call and you look like a clown, it should be easy to understand why the public would treat you like you are a clown. By comparison, if you show up on a call and are clean and professionally attired, i.e., you look like a professional, the public is much more likely to give you the benefit of the doubt and treat you like you are a professional.”

Strange as it may seem, the matter of professional attire is apparently not just a challenge for our young people.

I was in my office getting ready for class when the phone rang. My secretary was on the other end of the line, telling me that there was a sick student in the front office, and asking if I could come “check him out” while waiting for the 9-1-1 responders to arrive.

Though neither my instructional partner or I are running a ambulance service at the college where we co-instruct the paramedic program, we have always felt a professional obligation to respond to any call for help.

I found a 26-year-old male complaining of shortness of breath along with a terrible headache. When his B/P turned out to be 184/106, it was clear to me that something pretty serious was going on with this young man. I went downstairs to tell my teaching partner that I’d be tied up for a few minutes and went back upstairs.

When I got back to the patient, I asked when the paramedics were expected and this guy wearing a faded, wrinkled fire department sweatshirt, a pair of uniform pants that had been washed so many times that they were much closer to gray than navy blue, and a baseball hat that looked like it had been stored in a back pocket for the last week, told me that the medics had come and gone.

Moments later, a couple of firefighters came in and addressed the man as captain, and I was stunned. This was a senior command officer, making over a six figure salary, responding to a call at two in the afternoon dressed like he was a frat boy, or possibly going on a camping trip, or maybe a supply run to Cabelas. This fellow works for a department with a multi-million dollar budget that apparently thinks this is acceptable attire for a fire service professional. Had this been a call that came in after the crew had gone to bed, bunker gear or a sweatshirt might fly. But even then, not some ratty, faded sweatshirt. I just kept asking myself, “Does this man have no pride? How can he pretend to be a professional when there is clearly no interest in looking like one?"

What happened to allow this to occur? Clearly, indifference on his part, as well as by his department. Thank goodness, this department is the exception rather than the rule, as the close to 30 provider agencies we interact with routinely, have much higher standards for professional attire.

When all is said and done, if we want the public to treat us as professionals, we need to behave accordingly. Then again, if we dress like clowns?

Until next month…