Same Streets, Same Shadows: Exploring the Crossover of Psychosocial Experience of Police and Ambulance: a conversation with Dr Jo Mildenhall

Summary

Introductions and shared background

Both Dr SJ Lennie and Dr Jo Mildenhall introduce themselves as practitioners-turned-researchers with lived experience of psychological distress within their respective services. They have known each other for almost a decade, having both applied for PhDs examining how organisational culture contributes to psychological harm – SJ from policing, Jo from paramedicine. The podcast draws on this long collaborative relationship.

Shared organisational cultures

A central theme is the surprising degree of cultural overlap between policing and the ambulance service. Both are historically masculine, hierarchical, and militarised organisations, despite paramedicine being a health and caring profession.

Jo traces ambulance culture’s masculine roots to its origins as a transportation service, with women only entering in significant numbers from the early 1980s. Both services have shifted over time but retain residual elements – including gendered language like “manning” rotas – that shape culture in subtle but significant ways.

Emotional labour and the suppression of emotion

SJ introduces emotional labour (drawing on Hochschild’s concept of “feeling rules”) as a key mechanism through which organisational culture causes harm. Both services prescribe – largely through unspoken norms – which emotions practitioners are permitted to express. This operates not just in public but within the police car or ambulance cab, between colleagues.

One striking example from SJ’s research: officers with double crewing actively withheld empathy from victims for fear of appearing weak to the colleague beside them. This “peer surveillance” means the public receive a lesser quality of human response, driven by internal social governance.

Organisational harm and moral injury

Both researchers argue strongly against the individualised framing of practitioner distress. Resilience, they note, has historically been weaponised – used to measure and blame individuals rather than acknowledge structural conditions.

SJ and Jo are jointly writing a paper linking emotional labour and moral injury (harm arising from conducting actions that violate one’s values, failing to prevent harm, or being betrayed by the organisation) as dual mechanisms of organisational harm, arguing that both police and paramedics are chronically exposed to trauma within organisations that actively undermine rather than support wellbeing.

Jo’s research into paramedics during the COVID pandemic illustrated how organisational processes can directly perpetuate harm – practitioners were required to operate under rapidly changing clinical rules, with little structural support.

Qualitative methodology and the value of voice

Both researchers emphasise their commitment to qualitative, experience-centred approaches. Jo conducted 30 longitudinal interviews across the pandemic year; several participants later described those conversations as among the most valuable they had experienced. This highlights the therapeutic and validating power of research that genuinely listens to practitioners – particularly those who are otherwise silenced by stigma.

Current challenges

Key structural challenges discussed include: severe financial constraints across both services; the defunding of wellbeing initiatives before evidence of impact can be gathered; the absence of evaluation infrastructure within police services; and the loss of informal social spaces (canteens, crew rooms) that historically enabled peer support and emotional processing. The most recent National Police Wellbeing Survey, positively, has shifted away from resilience language towards organisational culture and conduct.

Current and forthcoming work

Jo: Leading a wellbeing programme taking a non-traditional approach – nature-based retreats and surf therapy (supported by evidence from the University of Exeter and Australian research) – offering paramedics structured but informal peer support outside the clinical setting.

SJ: Evaluating the perinatal mental health toolkit developed with colleagues from Manchester Met (Dr Krystal Wilkinson) and The Open University (Keely Duddin), addressing the impact of police culture and operational experience on new parents. Also working on police families research – examining the impact on spouses, children, and partners – and exploring whether this extends meaningfully to the ambulance context.