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Should fire and e.m.s. remain seperate departments?
In my area we have volenteer fire depts. and volenteer e.m.s. depts. I know that medical training is becoming more and more meshed with fire training. Should they stay seperate? Should e.m.s. handle all med. calls and fire only fire calls?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by lutan1 on
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I should also add, that it's pretty much identical in every state- basically every state Australia wide run seperate, but statewide services....
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Permalink Reply by Tony P on
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Still I'm wondering about training. I've said before what training is required here to become a paramedic - a three year fulltime university degree. That's the minimum training, then there's the on-the-job, clinical, training in the ambulance service. Career firefighters do a three month course after acceptance and then finish out their training on the job. If we were to combine the jobs, when are people going to have to go to university to get their paramedic degree, before or after they do the FF course? And of course the clinical training, where does that fit in? I won't say much about the volunteer side (which is around 60,000 out of the 61,500 FF's in this State) as it won't happen. See that word? Won't, will not. Or can't if you don't like won't. How can a volunteer FF take about four years off work to do the training? Part time would be what, ten years? Pigs will grow wings first.
I and others have mentioned 1st Aid, it's something I think we should all have. I'm trained in 1st Aid with oxygen therapy and AED. I and many others believe that all our FF's need this training, but the FRS is resisting that. That extra training is feasible. Does this 1st Aid training equate to BLS as people in the USA call it? I don't know, you have so many different acronyms for different types of medical care - are they all nationally recognised terms? Do they mean the same in every State? 1st Aid here is exactly that - training in simple techniques that can be applied to hopefully help keep a person alive until paramedic help arrives.
I had written another paragraph here, one in which I had a rant. Had I left it in I would probably, as lutan1 has said, be accused of being 'anti-American'. Admittedly only by people I don't care or worry about, the intelligent posters would have understood what I was saying. But I deleted it because I can effectively say what I meant in one sentence. This site aspires to be international, please remember that and instead of saying something like 'all FD's' just add 'in the USA' to your post. Something as simple as that will remove a lot of the frustration for posters around the world.
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Permalink Reply by KARL on
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I think we are all working for the same goal wheter it's vol. or paid and that is to better serve the citizens of our response area. We run both medical and fire in my paid dept and vol. dept. We have a private ambulance company that does the transport. As long as everyone is working towards the same outcome it shouldn't matter. I do feel though that everyone can learn something about both sides of the issue. Firefighters need to learn some medical and the E.M.S. needs to learn about the fd.
At my paid dept. you get hired and then you have to complete the Basic FF course at the academy and then you have to get your N.R.E.M.T-B Certification within one year of your hire date. EMT class is 6 months and thats with the clinicals. The fd pays for it as long as you pass it. In the vol. service they also have the chance to attend the EMT class. Our college offers a day and night class for this. It's not as bad as some are making it out to be..
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Permalink Reply by Chris Harris on
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The medical and fire training you speak of isn't "cross meshed" as you say, each one has a time period of learning, training and hands on skills that are required to do each job seperately. The cross meshing is merely cross staffing of personnel between both agencies usually in a combination department that provides both Fire & EMS services to a juristiction. The main reason we join such agencies is to serve the publics need for care and safety, so it does'nt matter who provides it as long as it is there when needed.
The county I live in certain departments provide Medical First Responders because the EMS agencies that serve these areas are so far apart the response times are increased greatly.
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Permalink Reply by chele on
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I will fight following the CA trend here in Kansas! Like you said, it's caused several small volunteer fire departments to go out of business! It's a simple thing, you make it too tough to be a volunteer and people will not volunteer. I live in a town of less than a thousand people in a county of about 2200 people encompassing 977 square miles. There is no money available to fund EMS/Fire for the three communities here. Closing up shop is not an option either. It's hard enough to do the job we do out here in the Middle of Nowhere without trying to follow big city trends! To me it makes no more sense to force combined training on FF's/EMS than it does to force combined training with Law Enforcement/FF's/EMS. Totally seperate functions that work well together and independant of each other.
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Permalink Reply by Ben Waller on
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Chele,
Does it make sense to maintain seperate fire and EMS services for small communities with a low call volume? Seperate services increased administrative costs, even for volunteer departments. Seperate fire and EMS requires two buildings instead of one, two electric/heating/AC bills instead of one, two water bills instead of one, two chiefs instead of one, etc.
Sometimes there are a lot of savings to be had from combining departments. You can have merged departments with EMS-only members, fire-only members, and members who wish to do both. It can also help with PPE costs - a member of both fire and EMS might only need one set of PPE, while someone who is a member of both would require multiple sets of PPE.
I see from your profile that you work EMS. When on the ambulance, do you ever call for an engine company to help with lifting or for CPR manpower? If so, maybe your system is a little more combined than it might initially appear.
Ben
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You bet we call for fire for help!
I'm not against combining forces, I'm just against it being a REQUIREMENT to be cross trained! Yes, it would make a lot more sense to share facilities, we've even discussed it here between fire and EMS. It's not likely to happen anytime soon, but we aren't saying never. What IS likely to never happen is to have shared administration. We have an EMS director, we have a Fire Chief and I don't see that ever becoming a position for one person instead of two.
We have firemen that fight fire - only.
We have firemen that fight fire that are willing to help with medical calls.
We have firemen that fight fire and are EMS.
We have EMS that fight fire.
We have EMS that do not fight fire.
If we were to require that all EMS must fight fire, and all firemen must be EMS trained we would lose one of our Asst fire chiefs, about 6 other firemen, and an EMS tech with about 20 years experience, plus I don't know how may others. It's just not worth it to lose them. Even if we were paid departments I wouldn't want to see forced cross training. Some people do ONE thing greatly - that's enough.
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Permalink Reply by Aussie_Wildfire on
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What is that saying Can't see forrest because the trees are in the way.
Hayden there are other ways of funding
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And I am very entrenched in seperate services also! Too bad I'm not in Australia!
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Permalink Reply by Mike Schlags (Captain Busy) Retd on
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Chele, So if I am reading this correctly, you have eight people who are threatening to leave if their job description gets changed? Sounds like the ability for your departments to move ahead and make changes are being held hostage...
Either you look to the future where you can be more cost effective or you might find other changes occurring that won't be a positive thing for you or your departments.
Whether folks actually have to do the jobs they don't personally like or not, it's called having depth in the system where when someone or something fails, you have a backup plan.
Your folks who don't want to cross train are akin to the old dog on the porch. They need to get up off the porch, out of their comfort zone and run with the big dogs. No one likes to be left on the porch unless they are tired, old and too lazy to make things better.
It's all about the public that we serve and providing a good quality service. Having someone tell me that they don't do this or that is like me listening to one of my kids refuse to do their chores. We need to be multi-functional when it comes to providing EMS / Fire.
Where I am from, the two are inseparable. How can you be any different? People that cannot multi-task and can only do one thing well are dinosaurs... and you know what happened to the dinosaurs...
As costs for providing services increase along with liability insurance and operating costs, what people do for a living will be scrutinized much much more. Just because you combine fire and ems, does not necessarily mean that folks trained as only EMS responders should not be expected to do interior attacks.
Your Assistant Fire Chief does not count because he or she is management in my world and would not participate in either fire or ems responses unless a command structure was being put together.
But your firefighters refusing to do medical calls or take medical training... the door is that way... don't let it hit you in the... Firefighters must be prepared for both ems and fire related incidents. Period. We must be able to take care of our own or stand in for EMS when their resources get hammered... providing anything other than this is not acceptable in the 21st Century world of firefighting.
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Mike I know 35 years creates a mold that you tend to stick to. BUT that parcel I sent you is all about a fire department funded by the state. Our fire departments have nothing to do with EMS in nearly all cases.
Our ems's are controlled by http://www.rav.vic.gov.au/ a state funded paramedic ambulance service
Reading all these posts, I find that our ems system (while still having problems) gets funding, beats the fire service where I live all the time, they are all fully qualified paramedics and any problems with the service is a state problem. Oh and by the way it will cost you anywhere between $1500 to $7000 for a ride with them
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Mike,
I couldn't agree more.
I'd also add that the smaller and more remote the area, and the less trained manpower that's available, the more important cross-training is to the fire and EMS providers that serve the community.
We need to remember that it's not about us, it's about the community.
Happy New Year,
Ben
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