That I will continue to care as much in many years, as I do now, for the people I treat as a medic.
Pretty much everyone has said that, that feeling goes away, and lots of people feel like they're going to want to help everyone for forever and ever.
It's my understanding that what I exhibit is typical "care about every single patient" new-medic enthusiasm and it's extremely rare, almost unheard of, for a person to actually keep that up over time. Like... 99.99999999% of all people become like everyone else, they get frustrated with those "bothersome" calls and it comes out in the way they behave and interact with the patient. And in those rare people that do, they generally are borderline basket-cases who are annoyingly perky all the time... and they burn out. I think I can honestly say that I care, but am not unrealistic, naive, misguided, or a basket-case idealist twit who thinks homeless people fart sunshine.
However, both medics that I've trained under have now said to me that they believe that I truly care, and will be one of those exceptions to the rule. My current medic told me this yesterday. The subject had never come up, and I'd never told him about the other medic saying something. We got done with a particularly "annoying" call and he just kind of said, "you know... I think you actually give a shit about people. I don't think it's because you're new." I asked him to elaborate, and he did, then I told him that my last medic had said the same thing.
He said, "see, I told you I'm always right". lol
(we'd been joking around earlier about how he likes to believe he's "always right".)
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