What strategies do you use to keep calm in emergency situations?
Being an ECA is a stressful job as oftentimes you're responding to calls that are very intense and life-threatening situations. It's important that you're able to facilitate a safe and successful patient contact and in order to do so you must remain calm and in control. Share with the interviewer some techniques or strategies you use in high-pressure situations to remain calm for your team, patients, and others on the scene.
"I always try to relax the patient's environment. When I arrive on scene, I try to quickly determine how I can remove stimuli from the area to help de-escalate the situation or patient. For example, if there is a bystander who is causing chaos and negative emotions, I try to remove them from the scene. Or perhaps there are a lot of flashing lights and music or background noise that I can try to reduce to help keep our team, and the patients calm.
I try to exclude calm and collected so that my patients feel reassured. When I'm calm, it helps me reorient and refocus the patient on what we're doing and reduces the chances they will panic. I speak to them directly, in a calm voice, and I maintain eye contact with them while explaining who I am, why I'm there, and what I am going to do to help them."
