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Permalink Reply by Brian Dumser on April 10, 2008 at 8:31pm

Try to calmly explain to the bystanders, (while continuing to treat the patient), that the driver is not badly injured while the pedestrian is critical. And as Tom stated, "you're treating the most severely injured patient, not the "white" patient". Hopefully this will activate their common sense and they'll understand that it's not about race. If that doesn't work, just try to mantain the safety of you, your crew, and the patients until the P.D. arrives. Good luck with your interview and stay safe!

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Permalink Reply by ffbam24 on April 10, 2008 at 10:39pm

This question is basically worded to see if you will "take the bait" on a cultural diversity question. It sets you up to assign racial bias' and profiling.
Don't take the bait.
A way to do this is by stripping the question of the bias' it tries to set up. Turn them into Patient 1 and 2 (A and B).
Tom and Brian both hit the nail on the head. Work up the most seriously injured patient first. You could even say something along the lines of, "I treat all of my patients the same regardless of any diversity. They are prioritized by the severity of their injuries."
Brian touched another point to this question too; scene safety. Verbalize that in your response. If the scenario escalates, try to remove yourself and the patients to somewhere safe. (Notice I said "patients".)
Just one way to approach it.

Personally I think this is a bad question.

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Permalink Reply by Shane on January 24, 2009 at 1:08pm

Just got onto firefighter nation forums and was wondering if you still were interviewing and if so what particular questions do you have on the process. I would love to try to help. Curious how this interview went with the diversity question, always a sticky one.

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Permalink Reply by Matthew on January 24, 2009 at 7:45pm

Defiantly an interesting question haha.

I think most people in that situation wouldn't care you treated the white male first...my God, the man was hit by a car! if the tables were turned then you'd help the black male first. I agree with the other folks though, while working with the patient reassure the crowd help is on the way and you are treating the 2 patients by the severity of their wounds.

Besides, it's odd the way they word that question...you wouldn't be the only firefighter on scene. If there were say 3 other people on the rig you could have 1 ff check the other patient out if the crowd became unruly, you could do that with 2 other firefighters or even 1 ff there to diffuse the situation until the Five-0 showed up.

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