you've done a lot to speak out against the ableism in this fandom and as someone who has mobility issues I really appreciate seeing your advocacy. I'm sorry you've been getting such harsh responses to your attempts to educate, none of which you even remotely deserve. you have done so much for this fandom and anyone who refuses to see that is depriving themselves of a lot of happiness. their loss Β―\_(γ)_/Β―
I have a question! it's pretty common to see medics written as cranky bastards who get pissed everytime someone gets injured and are perpetually annoyed with the people they're supposed to care for. how accurate is that?
Thank you so much. Thatβs so amazingly kind. Really. I do get a lot of nasty responses, but messages like this make them much easier to deal with.π
I see this complaint a lot in regards to the grumpy medic trope. Iβd say the accuracy of it is situational.
Iβll just say that at baseline, medics are individuals with different personalities. Some are more impatient than others. Additionally, the way that people communicate with each other in military culture can be kind of shocking to people on the outside. I can remember being a little startled by it when I started training at 17. Youβre conditioned to develop a sort of blunt, concise, abrupt (sometimes very ungracious) pattern of speech- very much βget to the point and quickly.β Especially while working. To people inside the culture, this is not offensive. Itβs widely understood that itβs not a personal attack. In fact itβs often seen as brotherly and affectionate. To people outside the culture, it can come off as rude, aggressive, and cranky.
Medics can be very busy while forward deployed-sometimes overwhelmingly so. When I was on my ship I hardly had time to breathe for months on end. You wake up before reveille, get dressed, set up for sick call, answer emails, meet with the CO, get breakfast chow, get accosted on the mess decks while youβre just trying to eat your congealed old canned tocino and powdered eggs by people asking you for medical advice or demanding you sign something, go back to medical to field day(clean), open the door afterwards to see half the ship sitting outside your door trying to get a 24 hr Sick In Quarters chit, triage them and see all of them one at a time, realize that half of them are trying to con you, fight off the entitled officers trying to cut in line because of their rank, get threatened to be written up for behaving ethically and saying no, try to eat lunch in medical, do scheduled abscess drainings and birth control shots and toenail removals and whatever other medical procedures, give vaccines, make sure the flight deck or whatever ops the ship is doing that day has medical coverage, conduct galley/berthing inspections and test different areas of the ship potable water for adequate bromine, finish nursing notes, update medical records, do biomedical maintenance, try to make it to chow, sort trash, take the trash to get processed, wait in a 45 minute line to get the trash inspected, hope the trash gets accepted, finally drop it off, answer emails, see any patients who have had accidents, feed and take care of any patients that will be staying in medical overnight, make sure night ops has medical coverage, take a shower, and then probably stay the night in medical yourself. And thatβs just if things go smoothly.
So if someone does something stupid and preventable to get mildly injured, and that cuts significantly into your schedule, which means you may now miss a meal or not be able to take a bathroom break or be prevented from going to bed on time-yeah, youβre going to be annoyed. And youβre probably going to be snappy. Youβre not usually not ACTUALLY mad-but youβre mad in the way that you get with a sibling whoβs done something stupid. And they will probably be lectured. But you still care about them and want to help them. In this culture, your patient typically knows this. Itβs not something to get upset over.
If the injury is critical or life threatening, however, I think itβs very rare for medics to be snappy at a patient. You usually enter The Zoneβ’οΈ and become deadly calm and try to comfort them as much as possible. If youβre snapping at anyone, itβs for nosy people who donβt need to be there to get out of your way. The more significant the injury, the better the bedside manner π. Same goes for on the field. If the injury is mild and your patient can still fight, sometimes you need to be aggressive with them to get them back into action. This is for their own safety. And same goes if they have a combat stress reaction and freeze up or behave erratically or have a panic attack. Unfortunately a combat zone is not conducive to good bedside manner or patience. As they say in TCCC, βGood medicine is bad tactics.β Your job is to keep your guys alive, no matter what. Itβs better for them to be traumatized and alive than justβ¦dead.
