Interesting to bump into this article as a young friend recently quit his just-obtained ambulance EMT job for, in essence, the exact issues described.
His take was less sympathetic (paraphrasing): "i thought i would be helping society, not endlessly cleaning up after its recurring mess-making."
I know a few people in first response fields (eg, fire, emergency med, police) and this is a common view, albeit not often leading them to quit their jobs.
Since there is seemingly no political will to prevent and mitigate drug epidemics, the issue rolls downhill to emergency workers.
I worked for a year as an EMT, and saw a lot of folks who were extremely jaded and unsympathetic after years of dealing with this. There were a few angels who did really feel that they were doing the good work, but it is really hard to keep that attitude up for long in the face of this.
Recently retired EMT here. You hit the nail on the head. For me, dealing with the patients was the easy part. I had one simple rule: just be nice and show that you care. Sometimes, that was the most important thing, especially with the chronic "frequent fliers" we were picking up nearly every day.
Coworkers were the hardest part, not just that they were jaded, but they actively viewed coworkers that did not ascribe to their jaded worldview as the enemy.
Similar experience w.r.t. patients (my coworkers were great though). It's really not about saving lives. It's about confidently telling somebody it's going to be okay when they are having the worst day of their life. That means the world to people.
His take was less sympathetic (paraphrasing): "i thought i would be helping society, not endlessly cleaning up after its recurring mess-making."
I know a few people in first response fields (eg, fire, emergency med, police) and this is a common view, albeit not often leading them to quit their jobs.
Since there is seemingly no political will to prevent and mitigate drug epidemics, the issue rolls downhill to emergency workers.