A note about paramedics' strategies for dealing with death and dying

Paramedics and Emergency Medical Technicians encounter death and dying routinely in the course of their jobs. Many times the death is not a clean and sterile occurrence but is witnessed and/or participated in under the most trying physical and emotional conditions. Using a participant observation approach, this research reveals that these workers are assisted in their response to death and dying by six principal coping aids: educational desensitization, humour, language alternation, scientific fragmentation, escape into work, and rationalization.