Speaking With Emergency Responders on Mental Health and Support

Hello. Will, how you doing? Nice to meet you. Nice to see you. Chloe. Very nice to see you. Thank you for having me in. No, thank you for coming. Brilliant. Maybe you could describe a typical day for both you two, what you see and what you go through. It can be anything ranging from someone giving birth, to chest pain, to just needing some reassurance, loneliness. Although some things might not be classed as an emergency, to those people it is an We see a lot of people from a lot of social backgrounds, a lot of health requirements. Crudely speaking, everything from birth to end of life, for them it is potentially the one ambulance that they'll have in their life. And to be able to have a positive impact on that and do whatever small things takes to improve that outcome for them is quite an honour. You Chloe, I think you started quite recently, is that right? Yeah, about just over two years ago now. So just as the pandemic started. Just as it was all kicking off. And how was that? Was that a bit of baptism of fire? I guess I didn't know any different, so I just got stuck in, booked a lot of extra shifts to help out. With you guys, particularly in the NHS, a lot of you have seen layer upon layer of more deaths, more tragedy, more sadness. How did that manifest itself in how you felt going to work each day? It was quite an incredible shift in how we were working. A lot of it was the unknown. It was quite a daunting, scary time. And I think it was also quite a shock to the system compared to how we had worked. It was scary, you know, we were seeing very, very unwell people. Was there very much at the time a lot of anxiety around what was going to happen? Because obviously it was all new for all of us. I think everyone was afraid, weren't they, everyone that was working and out there. To the extent, I think we resigned to the fact that it was likely that you were going to get ill. Yeah, it was really scary, thinking that you might infect your family. Are you able to keep on top of that and manage it and effectively reduce that stress load? I found that I'm really good at remaining calm on the job, but afterwards those emotions that I haven't necessarily processed, they stay with me and they build up. So my coping mechanism is to just let them all out, just to allow myself to be upset and then move on from that. I think I went through a phase of not knowing how to deal with it myself. As time goes by and the years sort of progress in service, awareness of what you've been exposed to is quite important. I put this barrier up where I found it easier to ignore it all and not talk about it and not talk to friends, not talk to family, because it was easier if I just had a work me and a home me. But then I later found that that didn't help and I was essentially bottling it up. I hear it a lot from not just people in the NHS, but from police and fire and everywhere. And it's this idea of not bringing the job home. We've both noticed it's been very difficult for family members and friends who aren't in the emergency services and who, I guess, sometimes naturally can't process why we wouldn't want to just talk about it there and then. People want to protect their families and their loved ones from horrendous and horrible and very sad things, but you're leading two different lives and you're blocking your loved ones out from a very important part of who you are and who you're becoming. That's exactly what I used to do. I had that sort of work, work will, home will. There's nothing in the training to really promote that, is there? We're meant to individually adapt. So it depends what your background is. You might not have the toolbox you need to deal with all these things. And so, you know, we need the training and we need the education to help. I didn't notice myself building up to that point where I wasn't OK, but people around me noticed and they would ask and they'd look after me. My team leader told me, don't do so much overtime, just take a month for yourself. And that really helped, but I wouldn't have known to do that until he pointed it out. When I was in the Air Ambulance, any job I went to with children, that really affected me. Much more than I think if I hadn't had children, actually. So for me, it was the relation with my personal life with, effectively, the family or the incident I was at. And I found that very difficult. And there were a number of times when I had to take myself away because I was just getting too involved in it and feeling it. And then going to talk to someone else after the event was really important, but that continues. It doesn't really leave you there, you just manage it better. Are there certain instances or illnesses or things that happen that you feel particularly emotive towards? You know, you get drawn in, does that happen? Children is something that I think affects everyone and also the elderly with loneliness. Seeing these people in need does sort of hit home slightly more. I worry for everyone, all of you, who've been at such a high level of work and despair, sadness. When can you and when do you take yourself away to process it? Because a lot of it is unseen at the time. You don't know it's happening to you until your circumstances or your environment changes around you. Sometimes it is the hours, the days later that you feel okay to talk about it. I think a lot of it is self-awareness as an individual, identifying how you cope and identifying your weaknesses. So like I said with myself, we're sort of bottling things up. Once you recognise that and you know that it's important to talk, I think it's easier to keep those stresses at a manageable level. If we weren't affected by emotions, we'd all be robots, so it's okay to be affected by emotions. It's very precious for us all to worry about being affected by emotions, but we all are. That's what makes our relationships important, it's crucial, but it's just managing those feelings so we can have time to feel we can breathe again. You guys both seem like you're on that journey of discovery and understanding how important it is. Spread the message, spread the word, make sure your friends are doing the same thing. Yep. Rotate.