As an emergency care professional, you are there for your community when they are at their most vulnerable. Whether it’s a medical emergency or there is a disaster in the home, you have made the brave choice to help when they need it most.
In emergency care, there are some physical dangers that you can expect to come along with the job. You may find, however, that it is the mental toll that can be more difficult to deal with. In some ways, even when you are home and no longer on-call, it can seem like you are never really off-duty.
These are some of the mental health issues that can happen while you are on the job as an emergency care professional.
Dealing with depression
Being in an emergency care profession can be incredibly rewarding. There are plenty of times when you get to feel like a hero who saves the day.
Unfortunately, almost as often, there are the days when you simply can’t. Either you arrive too late or there is nothing you can do by the time you are there. There may be times when you are able to take it all in stride, but then there are the days when it all adds up and the burden of your occupation feels heavy.
Depression can be very common in the emergency care profession. Having a strong support system is important to being able to process what you see while you are working to support your community.
Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
When you were choosing a career in emergency care, there were a lot of things you may have expected. You expected that there would be times that you wouldn’t be able to save the day like you had hoped.
What you may not have expected was experiencing an event so catastrophic that it would seem impossible to recover from. Experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder as an emergency care professional can be especially challenging. There may be things you encounter every day that remind you of a former incident. You may even find it difficult to work after everything that happened.
Taking care of your mental health is important both to you personally as well as for your professional life. Talking to a trained professional and potentially taking time off to recover could make a significant difference in your well-being.