Hello everyone. I seem to have stuck my foot in it. There is no getting around it. I was wrong. Let me explain.
The volunteer service in Kentucky in both the fire and EMS sectors varies greatly in quality from region to region. This is a nice way of saying that some of the volunteers are completely out of control. This is not to say that Kentucky has not benefited from the wonderful contributions of many competent volunteers. Some of these people started the services that now exist from the ground up, and they have been the backbone of what we have. They are to be commended.
However…
There is also inexplicable leeway given to many of them whose knowledge and skills are far below what is acceptable. It is hard to explain to you how bad some of the things I have seen have been. In fact, there is a problem with reporting them on this blog. The things I have seen some volunteers do are so hideous, so ridiculous, so fantastically wrong and bizarre, that I think many people would think that I am lying. The reader might be inclined to say, “There is just no way that this really happened, and Buckman is bringing shame to the volunteers by bringing this up.”
In a post that I have since taken down, I attempted to tell the story of a volunteer I once worked with. As is my customary style, I simply told the story. This person wasn’t diagnosed with any sort of developmental impairment, but it was obvious that his intelligence quotient was quite low. He did some things that were very embarrassing to the department and to himself. In the end he wound up being caught masterbating in the radio room and was let go from the department.
Yes…it was that bad.
One reader got really upset by this story. And looking back on it, I can see how my usual gritty style of prose did not give this story the sensitivity it deserved. That’s a nice way of saying that I screwed it up horribly. When we discussed this in the firehouse we cursed. I left that in the dialogue. We got exasperated with him. When he wasn’t around, we made fun of him. This is all real, and I wrote it as such. So I am not guilty of lying or exaggerating, but I am guilty of being insensitive. Parts of the story were funny. Parts were sad. I really wasn’t trying to guide the reader in either direction. The story was both funny and sad.
But it now becomes obvious that the plight of this poor person was the wrong subject for my abrasive style of prose. When I wrote it, I wanted it to be shocking, because lets face it…it was. But boy did it come off wrong.
So, here is the problem. One of the missions of this blog is to let people know what happens in the emergency medical services and other sectors of public safety. I have successfully tackled other subjects and have been praised for what I have done. I truly believe that volunteers are not a sacred cow. If there is something horrible going on there, I want to discuss it. People with mental handicaps are not a sacred cow. One of the points of the story was to call to the reader’s attention how ridiculous it was to put someone who was so mentally dysfunctional in a situation where someone’s life may hinge on his decision making capabilities.
It is an uncomfortable situation. I want to talk about it. But it has become embarrassingly clear that I am going to have to change my style of writing while I discuss it. And this is a tall order. I don’t want to clean it up. I don’t want to sugar coat it. One of our volunteers got let go for masterbating in public. I once rode in a volunteer ambulance and tried to find something useful in the cabinets. I found drugs that were expired over ten years ago, a turkey baster, and an old snake bite kit from the 80’s where you were expected to cut and suck the poison out of the patient. I have seen volunteers show up to runs when they were so drunk they couldn’t walk. I once read a year’s worth of paperwork from a volunteer unit and not once was a set of vital signs or an assessment written down. The paperwork actually said ‘took vitals’ and ‘did assessment.’
I could go on and on. I could also say some wonderful things about volunteers. But I have to admit (and you can get angry at me for this if you want to) in recent years I have seen more harm than good. This is my experience where I work in Kentucky. Your experiences may be different. I truly hope they are. I am looking back over 15 years of service, straining my brain to come up with shining examples of how a volunteer EMS system has worked flawlessly. I’m sorry. I just can’t. I will admit that I have known some large suburban fire departments that have had very successful volunteer programs. And I commend them. But almost every example of an EMS volunteer system that I know of has been horribly flawed. Whatever successes they may have made were overshadowed by their inability to check the unprofessionalism that was occurring. I have talked to other professional volunteers that were depressed by the state of things. So the opinion is held by people on the inside as well.
So, just for the record. I am deeply sorry if I offended anyone. It is not my intention to shock or offend the reader. Well, yes it is. But not in a Bob Saget sort of way. If you read one of my posts about how bad the EMS service in your area can be and you are shocked and offended by that, then good. That was the intent. It was not my intent to make fun of the mentally handicapped or sling mud on the whole of the volunteer services.
So here I find myself once again wanting to report something that is deeply troubling and deeply offensive without offending anyone. This is a tall order. All I can say is that I will attempt to do it with more style and grace than my previous attempt. And, note to self, I must try in the future not to just rip off a quick blog post on such a hot topic in the middle of a 36 hour shift while I am so tired and cranky.
Man! I wish I’d seen this post you’re talking about. See, I like reading your stuff because no matter how gross, depressing, crazy or hilarious, its all legit. There are too many people that try to downplay some of the drama/trauma/crazy stuff that goes on in our world, I think it’s important that you stay on point and keep writing the way you do. I know I enjoy it.
I appreciated your candidness in the post you removed. Things are the way they are, and sugar coating them doesn’t change that. I believe the biggest problem in the volunteer fire service and with it, volunteer EMS, is how MUCH crap happens, and how people WILL NOT talk about it.
I could tell stories similar to some of yours, although we haven’t had anyone caught masturbating, and people don’t show up drunk. But there are people who don’t have the brains god gave a kumquat, and people who haven’t done any real training in years- and that includes line officers. It is a scary, scary situation, and I think the more people are aware of it, the more chance there is of something changing. If there is any chance at all.
I joined the fire service believing that volunteers were there because they wanted to do the job, and wanted to do it well. That they wanted to help people, and to have the best preparation and training possible. Turns out, not so much. Some of them seem to believe the fire house is a social club for themselves and their buddies. I am tired of hearing “but we’re just volunteers” as the excuse for everything.
Yes, there are some volunteers who behave professionally.
Some I would trust with my life.
But there are also some who don’t take state or county training classes because they can’t read or reason well enough to pass the tests. Some who don’t train because they physically can’t do the job. And some who are over 70, overweight, and while they have years of experience, which I both admire and respect, they need to retire before they have a heart attack on scene- but they won’t.
It is true that some departments are better than others, and some people more qualified than others, and I don’t mean any disrespect to those who have their shit together. But I see them getting ground down day after day by the reality of the good-old-boy networks, and the embarrassment of being tarred with the same brush whenever anyone dares to suggest that the emperor truly has no clothes, to mix a metaphor or two.
I hope anyone who was offended by your post was so because things where they are are so much better that they didn’t believe you, and thought you were either making it up or exaggerating. I really do. I would love to believe there are people who have never had to deal with some of the stupid crap that goes on.
And if it sometimes makes things come out “insensitive,” I understand that, too. As I saw it, the issue wasn’t so much what the guy got caught doing, or his lack of intelligence, per se, as the entirety of the situation that led to tolerance of unsafe and/or inappropriate behavior even being possible. NO ONE should be expected or relied on to do things they are not capable of doing, period. Even if it might hurt their feelings not to allow it. It is no more appropriate to allow someone to do things they are not trained to or able to do, because of some “disability” that one must be “sensitive” about, than it is to discriminate against someone who IS capable.
Thanl you. I’m starting to feel a little better about this. one of the things I found out when I talked on shows like the EMS Garage and the EMS Educast was that the situation in my locale was dire. And as you may expect, we used to talk outside of the shows quite a bit. It must be nice to work for a service that has it together, and it must be nice to live in a well educated and well funded state. But it was embarrasing sometimes. I would always be the person that told the story that caused disgust and outrage. “What the hell are you doing there? Why don’t you move?” I even got job offers from a couple. “Dude, move away from the shit pile. We are hiring now. Can you get over here?” It was quite embarrasing at times.
But not everyone in Kentucky has twelve toes and carnal knowledge of their cousin. I would like to tell some of the unsuspecting well-to-do public what to expect when they get injured and call 911. Sometimes it is downright scary. Hiding it does nothing.
However, this particular person, no matter how backward he was, was very well meaning and very innocent. The things I said about him seemed very intolerant. And I got mad at him sometimes. Its not nice, but its true. I downright wanted to choke him sometimes. But talking about him like he was an idiot was insulting to someone who was really trying to help. I was really mad at the people who continued to let him be fooled into thinking he could do that job. I was mad at our command staff. But I was FRUSTRATED with him. At to that the rough language that goes on in a firehouse that I let fly unedited and you get a hideous blog post that must have seemed fantastically intolerant.
Have no fear. I will revisit the subject. I promise you that. I am on a mission now. I just need to make it clear who is at fault and inject maybe a tiny bit of grace into the story. Tolerance is a big hot button with me and I was disappointed with myself when it looked like I wasn’t being tolerant.
Thanks for the support. Now, back to the drawing board.
I originally was with a volunteer EMS in WV. We required training, required good skills and did not allow BS in the station or on the ambulance. We worked scheduled shifts so much a month to stay active and it worked very well. We had to hire “day staff” eventually and it was downhill from there. They did not have to come to trainings, ordered the volunteers around and the morale went to He##. This was the 70s and you probably would not be able to find folks today with the willingness to do what we did then. These days we are lucky if the folks that get paid to do the job do it like they should…as well you know…
It’s super hard to offend me, personally (but I did miss the post), but that’s a big thing of you to apologize for it and think about how you could explain it better.
Stories about how EMS actually can *be* are fascinating to me, and there is a fine line between diluting it too much and speaking a straight, blunt truth.
I’m halfway sensitive and do a lot of editing and writing, so if you ever need someone to take a peek and see if anything sounds bad, feel free to let me know. I’m happy to help.