Newsgroups: misc.emerg-services
Date:         Thu, 31 Dec 1992 13:33:54 -500
From:         Daniel Burstein <dannyb@PANIX.COM>
Subject:      news coverage NYC-EMS stress and suicides

to: various EMS types
from: Danny Burstein

a quick transcript of the WWOR story on EMS stress

@logo=DIIR

@volume= Vol EH Thurs 12/31/1992

Ch 9 "I-Team" report on NYC-EMS stress

WWOR tv, ch 9, based in Secaucas NJ, ran a report produced by its
"Investigatory team" following up on the NYC-EMS stress and suicide
problems first reported by Gale Scott of New York Newsday.

Attached is the transcript.  usual disclaimers as to spelling and
accuracy apply...

News Anchor Sara Lee Kessler: The trauma of taking a life can cause
incredible stress as you can imagine, but so can teh experience of
seeing terrible wounds and fighting every day to save lives.  The
burden is so great that some people who save lives are taking their
own.  Our "I-team's" Joe Collin investigates:

(various I-team" intro clips..., then:)

Video of ambulance racing down the street, lights in sirens in use,
radio noises in the background, etc. closes onto numerous clips of
EMS personnel treating various patients.  Ending scene: crew is
doing cpr on shooting victim lying down in ambulance, and one crew
member shouts: "go.. now!"

Cut to: dispatcher on telephone speaking to caller, asking them:
Person who needs help, are they breathing, are they awake?

Various EMS worker voices played video shows a most impressive CPR
effect: "You see humainty at its worst on this job."  "I think there
is an element of burnout on this job."

Reporter Joe Collum (with Harlem Hospital as a backdrop): NYC has
the biggest Emergency Medical Service in the United Statees.  EMS
workers here respond to 125 calls every hour, more than a million
every year.  And one of the results is an extremely high level of
stress on the job.  So high, in fact, that some believe stress may
have contributed to a rash of suicides among EMS workers this year.

Joe Collum: tragedy permeates the working days and nights of EMS
paramedics and technicians.  Within ten minutes of every train
crash, building collapse, or shooting the City suffers, (cut to
video of shooting victim inside ambulance, crew doing CPR, medic
calling out: "... Harlem hospital, approx 35 year old male shot once
in the head..") EMS workers are their, ofgten trying to start hearts
that have stopped beating.

Paramedic Rocco Cassetta: You go into the job sometimes, you cannot
believe what people will actually do to each other.  I've gone home,
and couldn't sleep for hours, (inaudible) just trying to make sense
of it.

Reporter Joe Collum: AS 1992 draws to a close, EMS workers are
trying to make sense of three confirmed and three more suspected
suicides by fellow workers this year, four of them in July alone.
That was four months after a US Air jet crashed on takeoff at
LaGuardia (video clips of the crash scene in background)

Dr. Alexander Kuehl: Many people after, for example, the US AIR
crash, have a general feeling of letdown, almost like a malaise..

Reporter Joe Collum: Dr. Alexander Kuehl ran EMS for nine years
during the Koch administration.  <editor's note: umm, not quite.>
He and others say the US Air crash left a deep sense of frustration
among the hundreds of EMS workers who got to the scene too late to
save the lives of the twenty seven passengers.

Dr. Kuehl: I think that there was a sense of "my god, look at all
these people, I can't do anything about this, they're dead."

Cut to a different call, crew rushing down an avenue, radio
squawking..

Reporter Joe Collum: Major disasters aside, EMS workers say the
stress of trying to save lives in New York City is an everyday
thing.  Driving headlong into oncoming traffic, trying to cross town
with drivers and perdestrians alike ignoring your siren.
EMS worker in a stuck ambulance: That cab won't move to the side.
He's (inaudible, but not complimentary)

Reporter Joe Collum: Every day is an emotional roller coaster ride
for EMS workers.  With each call they must prepare for disaster, but
often find only false alarms.

Reporter Joe Collum: On this night several EMS, fire, and police
units rushed to a building in Harlem where a caller claimed somebody
had just jumped from an upper floor.  It wasn't true.

EMS Public Affairs representative Sondra Mackey: It kind of makes
you stop and think.  You're thinking of the patient who really does
need (help), who will now have to wait longer (because we were
called to the false alarm).

Cut to: The Local 2507 rap video:
        ...called for a cut that wouldn't heal
        and in the meantime, right around the block,
        there's a twelve year old girl who just got shot

Reporter Joe Collum: This rap video, produced by EMS workers,
explores the stresses of the job...

Cut to: dispatcher on the phone with a caller: "He WHAT? Why? Check
and see if he has a pulse and if he's breathing.  if he is, do NOT
give him mouth to mouth. tell her that now.

Reporter Joe Collum: The constant pressure of dealing with life and
death pressures is aggravated by the threats EMS workers face daily
to their own lives

EMS worker: I've been hit on the job, I've been attqacked by violent
patients, I've been shot at...

EMS worker Lou Couly: Sometimes you get to a shooting and the
shooting is still going on, we have to hide around the corner..

Reporter Joe Collum: But in this day of AIDS and tuberculosis,
the greatest danger these people face is the breath and blood of the
people they're trying to save.

Medic Rocco Cassetta: You go home and you get a cough or you get a
little congestion in your chest and you go, "oh my god, I better get
a PPD, a TB (tubercolusis) test or something like that.  It will
just stress you out.

Reporter Joe Collum: Do you see how some of your fellow workers may
have been stressed out that they even took their own lives?

Rocco Cassetta: That's hard to say.  I think this job definitely
contributed.  Definitely it contributed to what happened..

Reporter Joe Collum: Joe Collum, channel 9, I-team.

<sent from email account, "dannyb@panix.com", or "dburstein@mcimail.com"
   (no quotes, of course) >