Working With Children

One of the hardest things in an emergency situation is dealing with children. How would you feel if someone came running to you with their baby and it was severely burned or it was blue? Even worse what would you do if someone’s house was on fire and they told you that their child was still inside…
I am not saying that emergency personnel have no emotional attachment to older people. I am just stating that children are harder to work with because the emergency personnel’s emotions get more involved. It also depends on how well the emergency personnel have been trained with coping skills. Some personnel will not let the emotions get to them while on a call, but afterwards the emotional impact hits them.
Can you imagine….you are a first responder riding along with the ambulance. While you are out helping to clean the ambulance you hear tires squeal. Then a man jumps out of the driver’s seat holding a baby. He tosses the baby to you and says help I think he is choking….
This is a scenario that has actually happened to me, and yes, the man really did toss the baby into our arms. This is how a lot of calls go with young children, the parents or other care givers get so worked up and expect EMS (emergency medical services) to work miracles. We do the best we can in the circumstances.
As emergency personnel we try and get out into communities and inform the public about safety hazards for children. Some departments do car seat inspections to make sure that car seats are properly installed. Others will give out stickers to locate where the children’s rooms are located. Yet, some departments will have days where they fill up rooms with smoke and teach children to stay low to the ground. Still other departments give out information on choking hazards, plug in fillers, and chemical hazards. These are just a few ways that fire departments try to prevent childhood injuries and accidents.
As EMS we want to try preventing everything possible. However, if we must go to a call for a child we make sure we are well prepared. All EMS personnel should know who they can talk to for support on how to deal with their stressful incidents.

Being a Volunteer Firefighter

Many people know a child that has dreamed of being a fire fighter when they grow up. A majority of children dream to do this when they grow up. Well I do not recall wanting to be a fire fighter when I was little but I am currently one today! There is so much extra training that goes into being a fire fighter than I could have ever imagined.
I joined a volunteer department about 9 months ago and am currently still on the department. My reason for joining was because I know the devastation families go through in vehicle accidents and house fires from personal experiences. I also am interested in emergency medical situations. After I joined the department I went through training every Sunday for about five months.
After completing my training and going through the final voting to get on the department I started to get to know the other fire fighters. While getting to know them they became my new family. Building a family with a group of strangers was challenging for me. I did not know anyone and they all seemed really strange at first. After a while I thought about it, and wondered who could be normal and willing to risk their life and run into a fire. I did warm up and made the department my family real quick. I now have a mom, big sister, and several brothers. They all reassured me that they had my back and support in whatever happens. If we could not build this family-like relationship it would be hard for me to trust them when we go on calls. This is all just how I began…
You see a volunteer department is different from a paid one because on a volunteer department not everyone knows how to do everything. There may be calls when only a few people show up or the whole department shows up and we have to delegate who does what. On our department we have people who specialize and if we get a call that involves their specialization we hope they are there. On a volunteer department you must know what your other members know. If my partner does not know how to use extrication equipment and I do, I will use the equipment and have them assist with helping to hold and support different parts. We work together as a team to get the most accomplished with the most efficiency. This is like a family working together to get the chores done. Whoever is the best the chores will do those so it takes less time.
I am continuously going through training and meetings. Being a volunteer takes up a lot of time. I am constantly at meetings to help improve techniques and training with in the county. We also have training every other Monday. About once every 4 months we do training with another department or have a specialized team come and do training for our department. Training can be a weekend thing or it can be just a few hours in the evening. Since this is not my primary job I have had to learn how to decide what I can and cannot make. This has helped to teach me time management because I like to make every training so I must make sure my other priorities are completed first.
On our department we have duty weekend. The department is divided into crews. A certain crew is scheduled each weekend, and they rotate weekends. This is to ensure that we have people in town in case of an emergency. These people should be available to make a call when it is there duty weekend. Other than weekends we take who is available at the time of the call. During the day most of the fire fighters are working their regular jobs so it is up to the college students and other personnel in town to go on calls.
Being a volunteer fire fighter has been an amazing experience so far. I have gone on several calls already and love it. The fire department is my family and has made this new learning experience a good one. It will help me to develop relationships with people later in life. It is rewarding to know that I just helped salvage stuff from a person’s house, or simply just put a band aid on scratch. Also joining the fire department was a great way for me to learn how to use my time management skills.