AbsoluteCare’s EMS Program—A Paramedic’s Story

By Jon McCarthy

I feel it is safe to say that, in many ways, our healthcare system is broken. This is most certainly the case for many of the less fortunate in our society, particularly those who suffer from chronic medical illness, poverty, addiction, and mental illness. They stop being seen as people and become nothing more than numbers against a bottom line and statistics.

I, like most of my peers, was drawn to emergency medicine by the desire to help those in need. We frequently encounter people at the lowest, most vulnerable points in their lives, and we help them. For that brief period, we do our best for the stranger in need. You know you’ve done a little good, and you leave them with best wishes and hope that things will get better for them.

When I was approached about joining AbsoluteCare, I was pitched the notion of actually being able to do more—to truly be a part of a team with the entire purpose of assisting those in need and providing them with true help; these are not patients but people!     

In my short tenure with AbsoluteCare, I’ve been inside several homes, apartments, campers, and street corners, meeting with people and bringing them into this mission. As I tell each of them that we are here to help them, I see in their eyes the same cynicism I felt when I first heard what we could, and would, be doing here. However, when they realize that I’m not selling them false promises, when they make the difficult decision to trust me and this company, I see a sense of relief wash over them.

The promise of what we are doing here is like lifting a weight off of their soul that they have been carrying for a long time. And when we part ways, with the assurance the true help has arrived for them, the smile most have and the heartfelt, “thank you” I have received many times now, lifts a similar weight off of my soul that I have carried for far too long.

We are doing good work here, for good people, and I am truly honored to be a part of this.