Being an EMT has its rewards I’m sure. But a lot of it is showing up to help yet another person who hasn’t done anything to live a healthy life, or leads a violent life, or has abused alcohol or drugs or food, now demands the most expensive form of healthcare delivery we have, and is unable to pay a penny for it, and consumes resources that an accident victim may now have to wait for, and will go right back to those behaviors again and again.
And one of those drunk people may turn out to be the next RDJ, which went to become sober and take his most famous roles and now donates millions to FootPrint coalition, Make-a-wish foundation, among others, or maybe Slash from Gun's n roses which almost died from a drug abuse and is now sober and helps many folks with his S.E.R.P.E.N.T. festival; pretty sure a number of EMTs were part of their lives when they were at their lowest, so yeah, making judgments based on where someone is at at any given time is not the best for society or for any given EMT; heck, I would have loved to help Hemingway once despite being an alcoholic until his bitter end, so no, when you look at life the way you describe is almost looks like you are looking for the burn out; I'm more willing to believe in physical burnout in that profession, is well known being an EMT can make quite a number on your limbs and back.
I don’t think EMT burnout has much to do with the situations you mention, but rather whether the workers are adequately supported by their employers: given the resources to do their job, healthy shift length and scheduling, mental health care, etc. My friends who work in emergency medicine seem mostly burned out by being overworked because the hospitals are perpetually understaffed.
I don't see why it can't be both. I've also heard this from the better-compensated police. Not discussing "physical danger" or whatever mind you, but the toll of constantly facing conflict and seeing some of the worst of humanity. Not a direct parallel, but burn out extends beyond compensation. I've also heard this from social workers, who granted also deserve better compensation.
I think it's possible we should be spreading out emergency response better amongst society, but I don't have much in the way of practical suggestion.
Of course, we should also compensate our non-police emergency responders much better. My understanding is that EMTs make close to minimum wage and tend to carry higher individual liability.
It reinforces ego. It's a common malady. An optional one (which isn't to say it's always easy to ditch given constant and insistent if irrational social reinforcement).
I’ve heard sentiments like this from most of the people I know who work helping the disadvantaged populations of our society. These are genuinely altruistic people, but they still get tired. For example, an addictions doctor was venting to me last week about how half of their patients don’t show up for appointments, and can’t even be located by the social workers who are employed to keep track of them.
Do you think those who optionally exercise the mental activity of making judgements of those behaviours are likely to suffer more or less burnout than those who choose not to? How useful an activity do you think making judgements of people you interact with is? Who is it useful to? The judge? The judged?
Not everyone exercises perfect control over the activities of their mind, and not every thought is carefully selected for optimum results before thinking it.
The point is just that even altruistic people, who one might presume are disinclined to such judgments, can find themselves making them after a time.
Besides, the doctor in my example was not even judging people, merely expressing exasperation at the inability for the resources expended to hit their intended targets. No one likes to feel like their work is meaningless, and getting paid (in public funds, no less) for patients who don’t show up might feel meaningless.
We agree on the empirical fact that many people generate suffering for themselves by encouraging an inner narrative of complaint about others' behavour.
If there's disagreement, it seems to be about whether or not this is necessary. I contend (along with thousands of wise narrators from just about every culture throughout human history) that it is not. This is just spiritual/ideological/psychological pragmatism (depending on your metaphysical orientation), and is intrinsically unrelated to altruism or perhaps ethics. Indeed someone holding a view that judgement of others is ethically or morally 'bad' merely shifts the target of the wasted mental judging-activity to their own putative ego.
Burn out is a thing in that line of work too.