Events of Emergency Services (Essay Sample)

EVENTS OF EMERGENCY SERVICES
Name
Institution affiliation
EVENTS OF EMERGENCY SERVICES
Distressing events that police officers, firefighters, and emergency medical technicians are exposed to and the potential psychological impacts
Introduction
At present, in the United States, places considered to be safe environments have turned out to be battlefields. No longer are churches, business places, homes, or schools considered safe from aggressive acts of violence. Furthermore, our social order is experiencing an alarming increase in child abuse, domestic violence, rapes, homicides, highway deaths and injuries. The repercussion of these disturbing events is having an adverse and devastating reaction on each and every one. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the police service, firefighters, and the emergency medical technicians (EMTs). Their day by day experience with these highly stressing and life-threatening events is affecting them emotionally, mentally, and physically. In addition, heart attack, substance abuse, and divorce rates in these occupations are amongst the highest in the United States. Efforts have been made to attend to some vital needs of these servants of the community. Nevertheless, there is lack of prospects to deal with job-related stress in addition to grief and personal trauma for these servants, their families, and their different departments. Majority of this emergency providers do not have training on how to deal with stress and this makes them at high risk of exhaustion and emotional unrest. Therefore, without intercession emotional and mental fatigue might rapidly lead to a model of negative affective responses. This makes these providers to be unsatisfied with their jobs and this reduces their performance and productivity and these increases turnover and absenteeism. This paper will talk about the traumatic events that emergency service providers are exposed to and how they impact their physiological and physical wellbeing. Finally, it will discuss on the possible solutions to these negative impacts on the lives of our emergency providers.
Events of emergency services
Emergency medical services technicians, firefighters and the police should be able to cope with a range of job-related stressors. One important stressor for all these emergency service providers is the exposure to personally distressing incidents (PDIs). These PDIs have adverse effects on the physical and mental wellbeing of these providers. Some lead to long-term effects that may cause disability and others may lead to death. The police service is recognized worldwide as one of most stressful and dangerous occupations. The police are frequently exposed to critical incidents also known as potentially traumatic situations, like witnessing violent deaths, motor vehicle crashes, and armed confrontations. In addition, fear-correlated adrenergic activation which is often triggered by terror during the threat causes greater over consolidation of traumatic memories and fear conditioning, both drawn in posttraumatic stress disorder pathogenesis. These and other regular exposure puts the police officers at risk of contracting posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Earlier studies show that the incidence of present duty related PTSD in police officers varies between 7% and 19%. This is alarming since close to one million Americans are serving in the law enforcement services and more of them are recruitment so as to curb the numerous terror attack in the nation ADDIN CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "ISBN" : "1051-9815", "ISSN" : "1051-9815", "PMID" : "17429146", "abstract" : "Police officers face the occupational hazard of repeated exposure to traumatic stressors. Additionally, as for employees of any large organization, they are subjected to routine organizational stressors in the workplace. Although police work is generally believed to be inherently stressful, very little is known of the impact of the police organization upon officers' psychological well-being. This study evaluated the impact on psychological health of both traumatic and organizational police experiences. Baseline measures of prior traumatic experiences, and psychological health were established at point of entry for 512 police recruits. One year later, the impact of police related trauma and organizational events was assessed. Multiple regression analyses determined that while both traumatic events and organizational stressors affected psychological distress, organizational stressors had the strongest effect, including the exacerbation of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder symptoms. The main implication of these findings is that traumatic stress is a hazard for police officers, but the importance of daily organizational stressors must also be taken into account.", "author" : [ { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Huddleston", "given" : "Lynne", "non-dropping-particle" : "", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" }, { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Stephens", "given" : "Christine", "non-dropping-particle" : "", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" }, { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Paton", "given" : "Douglas", "non-dropping-particle" : "", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" } ], "container-title" : "Work (Reading, Mass.)", "id" : "ITEM-1", "issue" : "3", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2007" ] ] }, "page" : "199-207", "title" : "An evaluation of traumatic and organizational experiences on the psychological health of New Zealand police recruits.", "type" : "article-journal", "volume" : "28" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=28ed5e83-d46b-49bc-a07a-1db5a3c1015c" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "formattedCitation" : "(Huddleston, Stephens, & Paton, 2007)", "plainTextFormattedCitation" : "(Huddleston, Stephens, & Paton, 2007)", "previouslyFormattedCitation" : "(Huddleston, Stephens, & Paton, 2007)" }, "properties" : { "noteIndex" : 0 }, "schema" : "https://github.com/citation-style-language/schema/raw/master/csl-citation.json" }(Huddleston, Stephens, & Paton, 2007).
Moreover, firefighting is also among one of the most emotionally traumatic and life-threatening occupations. The high stress levels that these firefighters encounter frequently might lead to PTSD, emotional problems, physical illness, poor inter-family affiliations, chemical dependency, and divorce. The lack of support from the public and compassion by business officials, government agencies, and the citizens for the dangers these firefighters go through and the common negative editorial reporting by the media adds to their level of anxiety. In addition, these firefighters are not equipped with any support or training on how to manage psychologically with traumatic stress. Even though there are some advances in the fire prevention technology like sprinkler systems, smoke detectors, and flame retardant building materials, firefighting as an occupation is still considered highly stressful and hazardous. They are still at a greater risk of death and injury that any other professions due to the intense heat and flames, "flammable, poisonous, or explosive chemicals and gases, or other harmful materials. Moreover, firefighters are usually the first to arrive at suicidal scenes, violence scenes like school shooting, bombings, rapes, and assault, among others, and accident scenes ADDIN CSL_CITATION { "citationItems" : [ { "id" : "ITEM-1", "itemData" : { "DOI" : "10.1037/a0026414", "ISBN" : "1541-1559\r1939-148X", "ISSN" : "1541-1559", "PMID" : "22449083", "abstract" : "Firefighters are exposed to a range of potentially traumatic stressors, yet studies examining the impact of this exposure are equivocal. Although some studies suggest increased risk for mental health problems, others suggest unusual resilience. Type of assessment methodology may contribute to the lack of consistent findings. We assessed 142 trauma-exposed, professional firefighters utilizing a standardized clinical interview and self-report measures and found low rates of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) diagnoses (4.2%), and depressive, anxiety, and alcohol-abuse symptoms. Frequency of trauma exposure did not predict psychological symptoms. Perceived social support, occupational stress, coping, as well as the interaction between perceived social support and self-blame were significant predictors of symptoms. Firefighters reporting low-perceived social support and high self-blame demonstrated the highest levels of clinically significant symptoms. These findings may inform education, treatment, and resilience training for emergency personnel.", "author" : [ { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Meyer", "given" : "Eric C.", "non-dropping-particle" : "", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" }, { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Zimering", "given" : "Rose", "non-dropping-particle" : "", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" }, { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Daly", "given" : "Erin", "non-dropping-particle" : "", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" }, { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Knight", "given" : "Jeffrey", "non-dropping-particle" : "", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" }, { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Kamholz", "given" : "Barbara W.", "non-dropping-particle" : "", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" }, { "dropping-particle" : "", "family" : "Gulliver", "given" : "Suzy Bird", "non-dropping-particle" : "", "parse-names" : false, "suffix" : "" } ], "container-title" : "Psychological Services", "id" : "ITEM-1", "issue" : "1", "issued" : { "date-parts" : [ [ "2012" ] ] }, "page" : "1-15", "title" : "Predictors of posttraumatic stress disorder and other psychological symptoms in trauma-exposed firefighters.", "type" : "article", "volume" : "9" }, "uris" : [ "/documents/?uuid=2b138a38-2dd6-4114-ad3e-f8c9138e7446" ] } ], "mendeley" : { "formattedCitation" : "(Meyer et al., 2012)", "plainTextFormattedCitation" : "(Meyer et al., 201...