Do no harm

I still recall the phrase from my first day of EMT school almost 20 years ago — do no harm.

It is our primary duty to everyone we encounter, whether a patient on an EMS call, a homeowner during a structure fire, or the driver of an adjacent vehicle when responding to an emergency call.

It may seem harmless, or even helpful, to take photos of incident scenes. We've probably all done it at some point.

As this story demonstrates, however, sometimes those photos can actually cause harm.

Hopefully, we are all smart enough not to take photos where patients' faces or identities are compromised; doing so could violate federal law, but more importantly, it breaches our ethical duty to the people we serve.

Being scrupulous about what we share regarding our jobs, and with whom, is even more important with the rise of social media and the potential worldwide exposure these websites provide.

Always remember that our duty to protect the public stretches well beyond the emergency.