Paramedics in peril: New study to give Canada-wide picture of violence on the job

Even after 23 years, Kelly Edwards stills loves being a paramedic.

"It's very unpredictable. It's exciting," she said. "You meet a lot of nice people."

But she admits there's a much darker side to the job, too.

Edwards recalls a time she and her partner were treating an agitated patient. That patient threw a piece of furniture at her partner, breaking his arm. 

"That was super uncomfortable, unacceptable," the Ottawa paramedic said.

Edwards said she's also been hit, kicked and spat on numerous times throughout her career. That's on top of the verbal abuse and sexual harassment she faces daily.

"I've heard lots of threats of being sexually assaulted and descriptions on how they do that," said Edwards. "It's pretty uncomfortable when you're in the back [of the ambulance] or you're alone with that patient." 

It's a reality that not only affects women in the job. Mathieu Roy, who's been with the Ottawa Paramedic Service for more than 22 years, said his safety "is put on the line pretty much on every call."

"Being told, 'I will kill your family' when I meet [patients] is something that occurred more than once in my career," he said.

Marc-André Périard, vice-president for the Paramedic Chiefs of Canada, said stories like these have become a regular occurrence for paramedics across the country.

"A lot of the ... public aren't aware that this occurs frequently. They think it's an anomaly," he said.

Périard said the problem only seems to have gotten worse over the years, but any details are mostly anecdotal.

Experiences of violence are significantly under-reported, according to Périard, because there is no standardized complaint system for working paramedics. Every service has their own culture and system, he said.

That also means there's no data available that accurately quantifies what the approximately 40,000 paramedics in Canada are up against while they're at work, according to Renée MacPhee, an associate professor at Wilfrid Laurier University who has focused on paramedic research over the last 30 years.