I’ve been thinking about interesting observations about this job, and something I’ve noticed is that we all seem to have problems with boundary setting, which seems to often contribute to a lot of the problems we see.
I was just thinking about this.
I can’t speak for others. I believe I’m really good at keeping my boundaries. I don’t get into personal stuff with coworkers and never discuss personal stuff with patients. Hell, I won’t even tell patients what town I’m from. I just respond with where I work.
Maybe things have changed in recent years. I’m a very old dog on the road. 30+.
Thank you for responding!
What thought process went into you deciding to make your username on here occupation-adjacent?
I’m a guy (pig). I’ve delivered 2 babies and helped save a 9 month old from near drowning in a bath.
It’s my original reddit name from 10+ years ago. Luckily, it was my name when Reddit people that did Secret Santa got 2 Guinness World Records.
I feel like identifying yourself as a paramedic on the internet at first pass is part of the boundary setting that I’m talking about. I understand some plumbers and lawyers and garbage collectors and postal workers and programmers and civil engineers also do the same but it seems overly common for EMTs and Paramedics to have identifying usernames or email addresses that are tied to their work and that is the kind of “leakage” that I’m talking about as well.
I don’t see that as a boundary problem. Why wouldn’t people be proud to have a piece of their career in a username?
When meeting new people IRL, one of the top & earliest questions will be, “What do you do for work?”.
I am horrible at keeping boundaries…maybe its because I work in very rural part, and everyone knows just about everyone lol.
That might be spill over from the volunteers a bit? It’s difficult when you are in a place where people do your job as a hobby for free.