Volunteer Firefighter and Volunteer EMT Burnout

[Guest]

I believe that there are a few issues that cause "burnout".  One, unfortunately is the lack of fires.  We all know that the exhillaration of fighting fires is one of the main reasons for us to be here.  When there is a lack of fires the morale can dip, and members get down.  I know that there are people that will disagree, but no amount of training will make up for a real fire.  Not only the actual fire, but talking to others about the fire for weeks after.  What you did, where you were...etc.  It keeps the blood boiling(no pun intended)!!

Another issue is that there are some 40 members per company and we all have to cover each other.  If you need a break tell an officer, and they will make sure that there is coverage.  We need to utilize the membership that we have.

It is about working together as a team.  We all cover for each other to get the job done.

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See, I don’t buy that...in fact, i find that rationale extremely problematic. First and foremost, you should not be volunteering to fight fires or be a hero - you should be doing it to give back to your community and lend people a helping hand in their time of need. If you get an adrenaline trip off the whole thing, that’s your business but it should be secondary. Likewise, I don’t think the lack of fire should be a morale killer...isn’t that a good thing? That means your fire prevention services are working and your fire inspectors are doing a good quality job, which means my tax dollars are working. If your saying that waiting around for a fire is what gets to people then maybe more training needs to be going on? Go to the FTC and do a couple of live burns. Do some inter-agency work, do some school demos and community information stuff. Then, when the big one comes you’ll be that much more prepared.

Just as a sidebar, i think, more generally speaking that people leave volunteer agencies because they tired of the politics. I know that’s why I recently resigned from the agency i volunteered at. Aside from the fact that the atmosphere reminded me of a college fraternity I was being told when and what to train on, what to do, how to fill out my PCRs by people who 1) didn’t even maintain the same level of certification as me and 2) who have far less experience than me. Sorry, but that doesn’t sit well with me.

Edited November 28, 2006 by 66Alpha1

[towerladder2 22]

Alpha 1......Are you telling me that while volunteering at a vac, if all you do are bls transports from nursing homes, that you would be anxious to go in and do your time because you are serving? That you wouldn't say.....I wish we get a good call today? I'm sorry but I don't buy it.

Of course the reason that I do this is to serve. I have for more than 20 years, both as a FF and an EMT, but you must think truthfully about the matter. Morale would bottom out at a vac if all you had were basic transports.

This is just the nature of the beast.

[Guest]

non-emergent transports are part of the business

[helicopper 1,050]

non-emergent transports are part of the business

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66Alpha1,

In re-reading this thread I see that you've made most of the points that I would have so let this be my "well-said, brother" post. You're so right, and this is one of the failures in ALL emergency services! What we do is a business - we have a customer base and they have certain expectations of us. True, we may be the only game in town but we are still accountable to the public we serve. That said, when the call comes in our customers need us (95% of the time we don't consider it a "true" emergency but they certainly do!).

If you want adrenaline - take up bungee jumping or something. Most of the time, if we do our jobs right, there should be very little adrenaline.

Morale doesn't have to bottom out doing BLS jobs if the system doesn't treat the nursing home calls as system abusers! If you take someone into your agency and foster the "let's be good neighbors" mentality that was posted earlier and cultivate the "every time you go a call you're helping someone" attitude you'll have far less resistance to the "less-desirable" calls. When I first started out, I was an action junkie and wanted to go on more challenging calls but as my experience increased I learned that helping calm the anxious elderly patients on medical alert calls was just as rewarding.

In the fire service, I imagine that activated alarms at commercial buildings at 3 AM do little for the customer service mantra but they're still part of the job. We don't get to pick and choose what happens in our full-time jobs - why should we have that luxury in our emergency service jobs?

If we all start treating this as a job (whether we're paid or not) and not some kind of club or hobby conditions and services will both improve! This means that training and "work details" are part of the territory, do your share or find a hobby (I'm back to the bungee jumping suggestion). If you're too busy to attend the training, or meetings about the future of your agency, or detail that will familiarize you with the tools of the trade, you really do need to reevaluate your motives and commitment. I'm not suggesting by any stretch of the imagination that you have to make them all, but you gotta make an effort!

Imagine if our customers started voting down our budgets as they've been doing to the schools all over the place because of perceived problems with customer service!!!

'nuff said. I'm now getting off my soapbox! Keep at 'em Alpha1!