Ambulance Idiot

Never have I disagreed so throughly with both Booklist and the general reading public in my assessment of a book. Ambulance Girl is the "heartwarming" "inspirational" and "honest" tale of a fat, middle aged, phobic, depressed woman (all her words, not mine) who decides, along with her therapist, that a job as a small town volunteer EMT will be lift her out of her slump. She proceeds to sign on to the local firehouse (in the states, municipal fire stations=EMS services for small towns) and drags her whining ass through the minimal required training. Upon "graduation", she recounts tales of such astounding ineptitude that i'm shocked she wasn't fired immediately on publication, or at least sued. Although her unprofessional bumbling improves marginally by the end of the book, it is made up for through a sharp increase in self importance and woe-is-meing over the emotional stress and strange hours that are (hello!?!) part of the job.

There are so many things I hate about this book, I am having trouble organizing them. Perhaps point form will help.

1. If you have serious emotional and mental illnesses, coupled with a physical disability that prevents you from moving with agility, you are NOT a good candidate for an emergency services job. Even if the service is starving for people and willing to accept you while holding its nose, you should probably do your hapless patients a favour and donate some money to the service instead. People's lives are depending on you being fit, alert, and competent.
2. If you work in the medical field, you should be aware of something called confidentiality. The author, Jane Stern, has a professional reputation as a writer. People know her work. They can find out where she lives. Therefore, they can figure out who the people are that she writes about. This presents a problem. Either she is flagrantly and outrageously violating the privacy of her patients for financial gain, or she has lied lied lied about her exploits for financial gain. Neither option really promotes a professional view of EMT's.
3. A professional complaint. Some of the stories in this book are, shall we say, padded for effect. But hey, in the words of James Frey, it could have happened. I prefer my non-fiction to be, well, non-fiction. Is that so wrong?

Anyhow, the upshot is that this strange and misguided woman has done everyone but herself a disservice by elbowing into Emergency Medical Services. To read a book filled with self aggrandizing drek about her misuse of the job was annoying in the extreme. Being a paramedic is a tough and rewarding job. It demands commitment and a tenacious will to work without glory. And in the end, the thing that really sunk this book for me was her astonishing lack of professionalism.