Background: Emergency medical services (EMS) personnel are recurrently exposed to traumatic mission incidents and chronic work-related stress. In order to withstand this strain, coping with emotional stress is crucial. However, little is known about the strategies EMS personnel use to regulate their unpleasant emotions, and how these strategies affect the personnel’s well-being and health. Objectives: We investigated the extent to which EMS personnel use emotion-regulation strategies (i.e. reappraisal, acceptance, problem solving, rumination, suppression, and avoidance), and how these strategies relate to the EMS personnel’s stress experience, job satisfaction, and stress symptoms. Materials and methods: In a cross-sectional survey, 102 EMS personnel of two southwestern German ambulance stations reported on standardised questionnaires their use of emotion-regulation strategies, perceived work-related stress, job satisfaction, as well as depressive, posttraumatic, and physical stress symptoms. Results: Correlation analyses showed that the tendency to engage frequently in rumination, avoidance, and suppression was associated with higher perceived stress, more severe stress symptoms, and lower job satisfaction. Acceptance of unpleasant feelings was associated with less severe stress symptoms, while reappraisal and problem solving showed no correlation with the EMS personnel’s stress perception, job satisfaction, and stress symptoms. Conclusions: Our results confirm the dysfunctional role of rumination, avoidance, and suppression for the well-being and health in at-risk professions. The context-specific adaptiveness of emotion-regulation strategies should be considered when developing profession-specific health-prevention measures.