“The opposite of love is not hate – it’s indifference.” – Elie Wiesel.

When the polling firm of Ipsos-Reid announced the results of a survey conducted from December 21-27, 2006 on behalf of Sympatico/MSN, I wasn’t surprised. The survey found that “Canadians rate “firefighters” (93%) as the most ‘trustworthy’ profession in Canada, followed by “nurses” (87%), “pharmacists” (86%), “airline pilots” (81%), and “doctors” (80%).” Everybody loves a firefighter!

I scanned the newspaper article looking for a hint of what Canadians thought about paramedics. Nothing in the Sun. They must have missed that part, so I checked the Star. Boy, they missed the part about us as well. So I perused the Globe and Mail and the National Post. Curious. They all missed reporting the survey results about paramedics, too. But, how could that be? Never daunted (some might say always clueless) I went online and headed for the Ipsos Canada website, where I found the article and the press release. Hmmm, interesting. No mention of paramedics at all in the survey. Fortunately, there was a contact listed, so I emailed him and asked the simple questions: Why are paramedics not on the list? Who determines the professions that are on the list? Can paramedics be placed on the list in the future? I knew the answers before I asked, but ever the probing mind, I had to ask.

I received a prompt reply from Mr. Paul Orovan from Ipsos-Reid Public Affairs. He responded, “Because there is a limited amount of resources available for such a survey, we try our best to provide a full breadth of professional responses, but unfortunately we are not able to include all potential responses. Many professions, such as engineers, carpenters, and paramedics we were not able to include on our list. This was not intended as a slight or over-sight on our behalf to any group, but rather a reflection of the fact that choices had to be made.”

Which brings me to my point. The opposite of love is not hate – it’s indifference. Jane and Joe Q. Public don’t dislike us. They are not ambivalent towards us. They are just clueless about us. They are indifferent towards EMS. They don’t know a thing about paramedics or paramedicine. And they probably don’t really care all that much, either. We, however, should care. We should be concerned that after many years of slogging it out in the trenches the public doesn’t even get what we do. Their only perception of EMS is formed from the images they see on television, on bad dramas and sitcoms and documentaries, most of which highlight an American model, which quite often is fire-based EMS.

Lately, more and more TV commercials dramatize our role in emergencies. How often are these depictions accurate? Well, think of a recent example. The Royal Canadian Mint in 2006 released a twenty-five cent piece commemorating Canada’s everyday heroes. The Medal of Bravery is part of the Canadian Honours system and was established in 1972. This new circulation quarter honours the Medal of Bravery and its recipients and, I suppose, the spirit of the act of going to the aid of a perfect stranger in trouble, which is kind of what paramedics do. To announce this new coin, the Royal Canadian Mint launched a TV spot depicting a car accident. By-standers, paramedics, police officers and firefighters can be seen tending to the victims. But what stood out to me was that we see two firefighters in bunker gear pushing a stretcher to the back of an ambulance, while a paramedic walks somebody else in the same direction. At least there was a blanket around the ambulatory patient’s shoulders. I wouldn’t want people to think paramedics did nothing.

While this might appear overly sensitive of me, I have to tell you that I understand. I understand that what the public gets fed by the firefighters’ unions and management is that they do all the work. I understand that what is dramatized on television is the same. Really, the only exposure the public gets to true Canadian EMS is the evening news. And if you watch the newscasts maybe you’ll be a little concerned about the image going out across those airwaves, too.

There seem to be many more video clips these days of firefighters handling stretchers, just like in the commercial I mentioned. Firefighters carrying patients. Firefighters doing our job. Yes, I know, some of you will argue that the paramedics are busy doing other things. But too often, I’m afraid, those other things include delegation of patient care or movement to firefighters. As my partner once remarked, we are so busy teaching advanced assessment skills and patient care to young paramedics that nobody has remembered to teach them about pride in doing their own job. I couldn’t agree more.

I hope the changing demographic of our profession is not altering the fundamental nature of it. I hope that we are not hiring more and more individuals who are incapable of – or worse, disinterested in – performing the day-to-day physical labour of the job; and that these individuals are finding it necessary or a viable option to get others to do the work for them. This is a physically demanding job and only those willing and capable of doing it over the long haul should be pursuing it as a career. Otherwise, where will we put all those injured paramedics that are sure to be the result? There are only so many modified duty jobs to go around. Perhaps this attitude of “get the smokies to do it” will work in the short run. But at some point firefighters and their labour unions will recognize this new, lazy or physically incapable EMS trend and begin to refuse to do our bidding for us. There have already been circumstances in Toronto where the fire department has refused to send lifting assistance to calls when requested and has questioned the nature of the request, as they should.

The broader point that I’m trying to make is that we don’t seem to have as much pride in our profession as we ought to have. If we did, would we not demonstrate it more by performing our own lifts, keeping our vehicles clean, our stretchers neatly made up, our uniforms … well, uniform? These aren’t glamorous tasks, but they are our tasks to perform, reflecting pride in our profession. Should we not be trying to get more front and centre in the media, either as individuals or through our unions or associations? While it is noble to be modest it is also costly to us as a profession. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and we’re hardly chirping at all.

The price to be paid for our silence is an indifferent public. There is an old Russian proverb that says, “I need not fear my enemies because the most they can do is attack me. I need not fear my friends because the most they can do is betray me. But I have much to fear from people who are indifferent.” A public that knows not what you do or how marvelous you are at your job will not stand up to protect you as a profession when the specter of privatization looms. Or when some silly civil servant begins calling for amalgamation of EMS with fire services (again). They will not speak up to their elected officials during rounds of collective bargaining to say, Hey! We like those guys! They do great work! Give them whatever they’re asking for! And they certainly won’t stand in your corner to support early retirement provisions for paramedics if they don’t feel all warm and fuzzy about the sacrifices you know you make each and every shift—the risks to your health and safety, the missed lunches, the long off-load delays, the late calls that result in so much end-of-shift overtime and missed family time.

So, I’m asking each and every one of you reading this to first of all pass it around. If you’re too embarrassed to be proud of your profession, then get the other guys and gals in the station to get the ball rolling. Then follow suit. Let’s make sure the public knows who we are by our fine example. Optics is everything. We know we’re great—now it’s time to make sure everybody else knows it, too!

While we’re at it, let’s push for our unions and provincial and national associations to lobby Sympatico/MSN to make sure we’re on that list of professions next year. Or, at the very least, we could follow Mr. Orovan’s suggestion: “If your association would be interested in sponsoring some research, we certainly would be happy to test these questions against the paramedic profession and place the results within the context of the other survey findings.” Sounds like a plan. Might make for some enlightening reading!

Let’s end the indifference. I want the public to love us!