I was sitting in a Field Training Officer meeting at one of my services recently when we got onto the topic of pay raises. Specifically, we had been talking about transparency and I voiced concerns about relaying information to FTOs (I am a Supervisor and often have to answer questions from FTOs). This service has spent a lot of money on a project that has yet to come to fruition and laborers are, understandably, starting to worry that they won’t get a raise this year thanks to the money sunk into this project. My voicing of the need for transparency in light of the laborer’s concerns was met with instructions to tell people to trust the service. This naturally riled me up and I pushed back, but thinking about it days later I am struck by how vividly this highlights a disconnect between how we operate in the field versus how we are expected to operate when interacting with our respective services.
As a disclaimer, this service is a non-Union shop. That likely plays a role in what I am about to write, but, by all means, if your experience at a Union shop has been much the same or different, let me know as I would like to hear about that and discuss the matter further.
In Paramedicince we are taught a simple tenet very early on in our training; trust, but verify. It’s not something we spend a good deal of time on, but I would wager that if you are going to be a high-performing and high-quality clinician you develop the trait of trusting but verifying almost from the onset of your career. A patient or bystander can tell you any number of things related to their illness, but it is your job as a clinician to trust them while also performing the assessments and diagnostic tests needed to verify that what they are saying matches up with what is actually taking place. This isn’t a malicious concept, rather it’s one meant to provide the proper treatment and diagnosis to a patient, as opposed to throwing whatever may stick against the wall and hoping for the best.
Trust, but verify became popular in America in the 1980s when notorious war criminal Ronald Reagan repeatedly used the phrase when giving speeches about his interactions with the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR or Soviet Union). The phrase is believed to have originated as a Soviet proverb, doveryay, no proveryay. Regardless of its origins and the various bad actors who have used it throughout the years, it is a meaningful proverb that can be applied to most situations in life. It should be at the heart of clinical practice for every practitioner in the Paramedicine field. Despite all this, in our dealings with our bosses and services (as a note, I prefer using services instead of departments or employers) we are expected to simply trust, but never verify.
Why is it that as clinicians we need to verify everything but as laborers, we are expected to trust everything? Why is it that our bosses laud us for our ability in the field to trust, but verify, whereas when dealing with them, at all times we are vilified for seeking verification and have the expectation placed upon us to blindly trust? You all know the answer to this, it’s capitalism. The system we operate in only works to the best of its ability if labor either blindly trusts its service or has no choice but to go along with the program. When we are told by management or our bosses to blindly trust in our service, as laborers we should always push back against such a notion. Each and every one of us should push for verification. There is a world of difference between saying “Well, I guess I’ll take your word for it,” versus, “I want to take your word for it, but I need you to convince me that I can take your word for it.” Capitalism has taught us that the latter is not just incorrect, but an evil way of thinking that is meant to undermine authority. Meanwhile, it champions the former, because when you don’t think and just go along with the flow you are doing your part to make sure you stay in your place and your bosses continue to lord over you unopposed by labor and unencumbered by any notions of questioning or justification for their actions.
If a clinician told me they responded to a clinic for a patient with chest pain where they accepted the clinic’s 12-lead without question, their thought process as a clinician would be left wanting. The same is true of a laborer who accepts what a service tells them without attempting to verify the information being provided. At the end of the day, we cannot count on our services to look out for us. Whether they are a private service, contract business, municipal department, etc. they all operate under the guidelines of capitalism, which says profits over people. Don’t blindly trust what you are told, continue to do your part and trust, but verify. That is the bare minimum at which we should operate in our dealings with our respective services. Personally, I advocate for not trusting anything associated with capitalism, but I’m not convinced that jives with the way most Americans operate. People seem to inherently want to trust what their services and bosses tell them. That being the case, trust, but verify so that your trust isn’t misplaced.
Lead photo courtesy of Jennifer Graff – LinkedIn
