What’s Our Responsibility?
What is the responsibility of a fire and EMS organization? Is it to create employment for career employees or to provide a social organization for volunteer members? Is it to provide a work schedule that enables employees to work other jobs or own their own businesses? Or is it to provide the necessary emergency services to prevent the unnecessary loss of life or property from fires, medical emergencies, accidents and the other calamities of daily life?
Fire organizations’ primary responsibility is to provide critical emergency services and the injury- and accident-prevention education to stop problems in the first place. Career and volunteer organizations also have a responsibility to provide a working environment that is free of unmanaged hazards. How can a department accomplish the former without being diligent about the later?
I‘ve already broached the topic of the 24-hour tour of duty and sleep deprivation and the potential negative impact of that sleep deprivation on a member‘s job performance. More than a few colleagues have posted their thoughts, experiences or anecdotal “evidence.” Some agree that the 24-hour shift may have outlived its usefulness for many organizations, while others expanded upon its virtues. It’s interesting, however, that nobody has mentioned fire agencies’ primary responsibility to their members &mdash to not expose them to unmanaged hazards.
If there isn’t, as some have stated, the research and the data to adequately define the problem, why is that? Is the issue of sleep deprivation and its affect on worker performance another example of the fire and EMS mentality regarding health and wellness where the fire service ignores the problem until it conducts its own research and formulates its own solution?
Members also have a primary responsibility when they sign up for this career: to come to the job fit for duty every day. The most important piece of safety equipment is the body that dresses in protective clothing, the body that breathes from the SCBA, and the body that drives the emergency vehicle. But how many people share that perspective? If they did, they wouldn‘t eat servings at the fire station dinner table that could feed a family of four, they wouldn‘t be out of their seats and unbelted when the truck starts moving, they wouldn‘t drive the truck at excessive speeds, and they wouldn‘t report for duty with only a couple hours of sleep.
I do have an agenda, but it‘s not to eradicate the 24-hour tour of duty. Rather, I‘m doing my best to follow the lead of people like Alan Brunacini, Vinny Dunn, Bill Manning and Dr. Burt Clark, predecessors who have scanned the environment, identified the threats to firefighter health and safety, and made it their mission to influence people to action. Many organizations are getting busier every day. There are more hazards to manage, and the public has higher expectations than ever before. To meet those demands and expectations, we can‘t afford to have people who literally may be asleep at the wheel or dozing when they should be calculating the proper dose of medication in the back of an ambulance at 3 a.m.
