Episode 1 Johan Macias EMT and mental health

Johan Macias, an EMT and pre-med bio major, discusses the importance of first responders' mental health. He became an EMT because he wanted to work in healthcare. His daily routine involves checking supplies and being prepared for emergencies. The key skill for successful patient runs is staying calm under stress. First responders have higher suicide rates, with law enforcement officers being the most affected. Johan acknowledges that his work can impact his mental health but focuses on the positive impact he has on others. While there aren't many resources at his job, he believes his bosses would be understanding if he needed time off. Hi, welcome everybody. My name is Denae Merlo and this is the first episode of Talking with Denae. Today my guest here is, I'm so excited, we're going to be talking about a great and very important topic. We're going to be talking about first responders, health care workers, and their mental health. I'm here with Johan Macias, who is an EMT for First Rescue Ambulance, and he has been working as an EMT for just under one year now. He is currently a pre-med bio major and is studying to be a physician's assistant or a PA. And we're going to be talking about why first responders are so important and so is their mental health. And because first responders are the first people on the scene and they deliver care to people who need it so urgently, they also deserve to have care available to them when they need it. So hi, Johan, welcome. Hello, thanks for having me. Johan, why did you become an EMT? So originally I became an EMT because I knew I always wanted to work in health care. And when I was young, I didn't really know that many options. So when I just learned about becoming an EMT and trying to work on the ambulance and being a first responder, that really gravitated towards me and I decided to become one. And what does your day to day look like? So my day to day normally starts with me getting to station. Once I'm at station, I kind of talk to dispatch for a little bit, see if I have a call waiting or anything at the moment. If not, I just go to my rig, I make sure everything's all checked out on the rig. So I make sure I have all my supplies I'm going to need for the day. I make sure it's all clean before we start. And I just make sure we have everything basically to get started for the day. So as a health care worker and as a first responder, what is a skill or trait that you must have for successful patient runs? I would say a big skill that's needed is probably being able to work under stressful situations. Especially when dealing with other people and other people normally when something's going on, especially health related, they can be very stressed out, very panicky. So it's a really useful skill to be that calmness in the storm for them, just so you could help the situation not make it worse. And I have a statistic here from the US Fire Administration that talks about a study where it examines higher suicide rates among first responders. And it was broken down by the response disciplines and first responder suicides occurred among law enforcement officers around 58 percent, firefighters were 21 percent, EMS providers 18 percent, and public safety telecommunicators around 2 percent. So with that in mind, how do you feel that your work affects your own mental health or how do you deal with difficult cases that don't have a positive outlook? I would say my mental health, it can be affected by the day. It just can't be helped. You know, you're put into situations that can be stressful and it might appear on the outside that you're not trying to be stressed out, you're trying to be calm, but once the call is finished, you can really live with that. So I can see why a lot of people struggle with that or a lot of people become numb to it and try to not think about it. Me personally, I would just try to focus on the good that I do, the help that I do to people, for people, and I think that really just gets me through the day. Are there any resources available at your work for the workers or employees to help you cope and deal with traumatic experiences? Me personally, at my job, I would say there's not a lot of resources for being able to get help, but I know that if I talked to my upper management, to my bosses or anything, let them know what's going on and how I'm feeling in that moment, I'm sure they would understand and at least give me some time off just so I can help clear everything in my head. So not really resources, but I know they would be understanding of it. Thank you so much for coming and talking today, and this podcast has been brought to you by Students of Journalism in the School of Fine Arts and Communication at Biola University. Thank you, Johan. Alright, thank you so much for having me today.