Career OCD

OCD can impact you in many ways especially in the nature of e

Can definitely relate. This is absolutely a feeling all new people and ppl already in EMS feel, as they learn new things & find themselves on their own journey as a health care provider. Give yourself the grace you are learning. Even the “pros” make mistakes as well. We are all human. Don’t be so hard on yourself (easier said then done, but it’s true). The saying “fake it until you make it” carries heavy in this field. You might learn to find some of the most “confident” / put together EMS personnel actually don’t truly know what’s going on all the times / make awful calls /have lost their composure a bunch of times in the worst possible moments. don’t be afraid to make mistakes or look silly, we all have our moments and have been there before. You will definitely make mistakes (big & small) especially a lot in the beginning and that is okay. We have all been there. What matters is how you take accountability, pick yourself up and carry on, stay curious and open, and not to beat yourself up, too hard. It’s all practice and repetition, in addition to getting to experience things. I think something I had to learn and realized later in EMS is that ppl will complain/ criticize/ give you “feedback”, but that doesn’t mean it’s accurate/ helpful, or even have pertinent merit to the situation(s) at hand. Sometimes it’s just people being hyper critical / trying to psych you out (even pre-psych you out) when it’s not at all necessary & they just want to feel better about themselves so they tear someone else down. So, being able to sift through that noise accompanied with that constructive criticism is an important skill to learn. And all of these things take time and experience to master. there are infinite ways to go about obtaining the same goal. You just need to focus on what works for you. Even if you’re doing things by the book anything can happen and throw you off your toes. It can be easy to get side tracked and it happens to all of us, that’s why you got a partner :) There is a lot of ambiguity in real life EMS and not everyone will know or have an answer. We have buffers like med control and your partner to bounce ideas off of or explain the situation(s). The instructors are there to help you, i am sure there are other classmates who feel exactly the same way, but play koi. Its best to just do the thing even if it isn’t perfect, take things with a grain of salt, let it roll off of you. Its helped me to be Imagining an intrusive thought or image or video you have fall like a leaf into a river and just dispear down the stream

I am also a healthcare worker and slightly newer to my field. The imposter syndrome is huge especially when it comes to doing things where someone’s life is in your hands. I feel so scared so much of the time that I’m going to mess up and hurt someone. What’s so hard about that for me is that i know that I will mess up, people are imperfect, but I can’t stand the thought that I could mess up so badly that it really hurts someone. It puts me into panic.