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Individual Responsibility of an Officer

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Fire officers have a wide variety of responsibilities. They range from in house duties to on scence duties. Everything from making sure that the reports get completed, to crew training and cleaning to making sure that a crew stretches the appropriate attack line properly as ordered, to commanding the scene just to name a few. Most officers, especially in a volunteer system, have other responsibilities such as meetings and committees that fall on days other than their duty. If an officer fails to attend one of these meetings they miss out on the opportunity to gain insight to new happenings, potential changes in SOPs or protocols, or they miss out on training that they can’t get another way. I very recently had a subordinate officer make a remark on a social networking site about the lack of a reminder for a meeting he was supposed to be in attendence for. When did the fire service begin being a hand-holding service?

My parents raised me to be responsible for my activities.  Track, Cross Country, working part time, Firefighter and EMT classes…. all were activities that I took part in while in high school. I was responsible to know where I was supposed to be and when. If I missed something, or there was a conflict – I had to be responsible for making the appropriate notifications to my boss, coach or instructor that I couldn’t be present and explain why. Now that I’m a “boss” I’m responsible for being on time for meetings, duty, training classes and committee meetings. If I can’t be present I HAVE to make other arrangements, whether that means getting someone else to cover for me, or rescheduling.

Are there any others having issues with officers not being responsible for themselves and their time? Does anyone have any advice on how to approach this issue? Because my parents taught me, I’m at a loss at how to approach this. What I’m afraid of is that this attitude of “Oh well” will begin to permeate through the ranks of the members and then there will be problems of no one taking responsibility for anything.

Posted by on March 15, 2012 • Filed under: Administration & Leadership, Command & Leadership, EMS Health & Safety, EMS Topics, Fire Prevention & Education, Fire Rescue Topics, Firefighter Safety & Health, Firefighting Operations, Funding & Staffing, Training, Training & Development, Uncategorized

What’s an emergency?

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I know that my 7.5 years pales in comparison to many of those that are on the Job currently, but I feel like I have seen my share of “emergencies” in this time. What constitutes an emergency though?

Merriam-Webster defines an emergency as “an unforeseen combination of circumstances or the resulting state that calls for immediate action”.

We’ve all been there – 2am, at the nursing home for “unusual labs” but the patient states they don’t really want to be transported – but their Doc says they have to. Yea, it gets frustrating, especially when they’ve had the labs for the past 18 hours and are just now calling us, but I’m not physician. Hell, I haven’t even finished college. I can read, and can see what the lab report says, but that doesn’t mean I would truly understand what it means. The other portion of this side of the spectrum are the patients who have a  broken nail (I have been dispatched to a call for a broken finger nail). We get these calls from years of telling patients “We’re here for you, calls us if you need us” or similar statements. We are here for the public, but phrases like these lead to over worked 911 systems. I’ve been told by a close friend that a large metropolitan area (not in VA) that utilizes a priority/triage based system of receiving and dispatching emergency calls. This method of dispatching helps to ensure that the most critical patients receive the most appropriate care as fast a possible, while more stable patients receive it as units are available. Now, I’m not familiar with this set up personally, so if someone has personal knowledge of it, please let me know.

What really brings this question to mind tonight isn’t the overworked EMS system, but the fact that I received a phone call the other evening from a family friend about an odor of gas in her house. She was calling me because her husband was out of town and she knows I’m a firefighter. Well, I was at work so there wasn’t much I could do for her personally. My response was simple – get out and call 911. Sure, it may just be a pilot light out, or something arbitrary like that, but why risk it? She wasn’t too keen on calling 911. As a firefighter with access to gas monitors and PPE, the odor of gas isn’t as great a concern to me. But for an average person it should be considered an emergency. Same as a CO detector going off should be an emergency (unless its a low battery alert which is a different noise from an alarm).

I have met more people on fire service calls apologizing for calling 911 and having us come out than any other call type. I look at it from the stand point that if you call because your CO detector is going off, or you have an odor of smoke or gas then calling us is a preventative measure. Similar to going and getting a yearly physical. Why put yourself at risk? We are here to serve the citizens, tax-paying or otherwise.

The public calls on us - Firefighters, EMTs, Medics – to come and assist them with something that they perceive to be an emergency, whether we see it as such or not is a different matter.

What is an emergency? Who decides?

Posted by on January 27, 2012 • Filed under: Command & Leadership, Fire Dispatch, Fire Prevention & Education, Funding & Staffing, Training, Training & Development, Uncategorized