Stuff I Wish They`d Taught Me in Class Part 10: Be Aggressive

“Be aggressive! B-E aggressive! B-E A-G-G-R-E-S-S-I-V-E! Be aggressive!”

Anyone who’s watched peewee football on Saturday mornings or high-schoolers under the lights on Friday nights has heard countless cheerleaders scream this cheer. As a cheerleader myself, I yelled it for 10-plus years. Little did I know just how important that phrase was.

I can be painfully shy, especially around people I don’t know. Putting me among a mix of people I don’t know plus a crowd of people I’m not in direct control of can lead to me finding the nearest exit to run screaming through.

Early on in EMS, I didn’t have to be aggressive; that’s what the rest of my crew was for. Riding as third or fourth person, there were shifts where I didn’t speak save for sitting around the station before and after calls. I would silently go about my business, fetching gear and helping load patients, a silent cog in a well-oiled machine. I was one small piece in a whole puzzle, and that was how I went about things.

Even when precepting a paramedic, I didn’t have to be aggressive or outgoing. All too often on scenes where I needed to be “loud and proud,” I had partners of the male gender to relay and enforce my decisions to all those around. What helped reinforce the idea that it was OK to be seen and not heard were the moments when I would try to be aggressive and forward, but would be ignored. Grab someone with external plumbing and ask them to relay what I asked for...voila! Whatever I wanted was mine.

It wasn’t until I had to confront my three worst enemies at the same time that I realized being aggressive at times was the only way to get my point across.

It couldn’t have been but a few months after getting my paramedic certification and being cut loose on my own that an electronics store in our area was having a going-out-of-business sale. It had been advertised in the local paper and on the evening news for weeks prior to the event. We even had a preplanning session with fire and police in case a riot broke out. I remember thinking how I wasn’t going to be directly involved; if a situation occurred, we were to stage outside, and patients would be brought to us. No big deal.

The morning of the sale, as I was going into work, the crowd of people to get into the store seemed to fill the parking lot. Initial estimates brought the number to several hundred, if not more. As we checked out the ambulances for the shift, one of the local cops, a good friend of our department, showed up for coffee. He handed me a small, nearly pocket-size air horn and told me to lay on the horn if I got lost in the throng of people. We all got a good laugh from it; I am not the biggest person, so it wasn’t too far-fetched for me to get lost in a crowd and not be able to see anyone familiar. I shoved the air horn in my coat pocket and forgot about it within minutes.

Not much more than an hour after the store opened, we got our first call. It wasn’t the full-scale riot we’d feared, but a possible stroke. As we arrived at the store in our ambulance, we could barely get through the crowd of people. Jokes flew back and forth about running people over just to get through, but we made it to the front of the store without mowing an innocent bystander down.

To say it was packed was an understatement. We moved about 20 feet in almost 10 minutes. As we made our way through, people pushed back, more concerned about buying new stereos than the bunch of medics and cops trying to get past.

We finally came to a point where the crowd was just not moving. We couldn’t move forward, and we couldn’t go back. People were pushing from all directions. I started panicking; I hated the crowd and the fact that no one was listening. They just didn’t care. I started getting more angry and more frustrated until I’d finally had enough. I gathered up my imaginary male parts and yelled above the din of the crowd, “Hey! Will y’all please get out of our way?! We’re trying to save a life here!”

You’d have thought someone took a cattle prod to those around us. A path cleared like magic. We got to our patient and whisked him off without further ado.

In that moment I learned the reason I had to be aggressive. Just because I showed up in a white box with red lights and wore a uniform didn’t mean I would be immediately respected. I needed to assert myself as being in charge. Other ways I notoriously got “run over” because I wasn’t aggressive enough included during patient care; there’s nothing like a medic from another service ripping the IV needle from your hand and getting your stick because you were trying to gently coax your PCP-addled patient to “be nice” and “be a good boy.”

There’s nothing wrong with showing that you have a pair, no matter what your gender may be. You can earn a bit more respect from your coworkers when you can show them you have the testicular fortitude to handle any situation thrown your way…or at least look like you’re handling it.

Have fun and be safe.

Shao Trommashere completed paramedic class in 2007 after working as an EMT since 2002 in the Northeast corner of the United States. She also has a blog called Looking Through A Pair of Pink Handled Trauma Shears.