It may take extra time that you don't think you have. That time may seem very valuable. The shortcut you take may seem like it saves those precious seconds. But I have seen in my life, many times when those shortcuts have proven catastrophic, and in most of those situations, I look at them and wonder, had someone taken a few extra moments to do it right, what the outcome might have been.

While the historical issue between response to rescues in New York City is frustrating and sad, since it seems to me to be the confluence of a power struggle and turf battle, instead of celebrating a terrific save the other day, instead we have this tragedy to contend with, as shared with us by Dave Statter on his blog.

I have always learned and always taught that when lifting, we "crib to the lift". And while the spreaders are not the desired lifting tool, I have used them before and they have worked just fine. I preface that, however by explaining that I am also passionate about physics and when I have used spreaders, I also understood that the force applied must go somewhere, and if the load isn't stabilized, the force is going to create motion we don't want. In this case, the force displaced the object alright: lateral to the support (the spreader) and with nothing to support the load (cribbing) the load went to ground (and victim).

I don't care if you are FDNY, ESU, or anyone else. I have seen this very same shortcut taken before in departments that have had identically catastrophic results. I also recall other times when the load has shifted on the column, in one case, three stacked air bags.  In this case, the firefighter, who happened to also be the salesman of the lift bags and should have a little expertise in their use, himself was killed.

There's a lesson to be learned in every tragedy. Aside from the physical principles that apply to all of us here on this planet, there's another very important one. Driving recklessly, failing to wear your seatbelt, not wearing proper PPE, not paying attention to overhead power lines, and in this case, not providing an alternate column to support the load via cribbing, all might seem like they are saving precious seconds, but failing to do the right thing the first time, ended instead in tragedy.

Take a moment to ditch the emotion and be the professionals you are. Do the right thing the first time.

SC-TF1 Demobilizing From Chalmette, LA after Hurricane Katrina, 2005.

I was pretty self-conscious about that decision, even though nobody knew who answered each question and nobody would have known it was me that graded us so. I actually thought about it long afterward, in an attempt to understand in my absolute certainty with 10 seconds on the clock, that we deserved the highest mark on a standard grade. It was, frankly, a little presumptuous of me.

The quick answer is that we don’t deserve an “A”. We are definitely customer oriented and we are definitely aggressive firefighters who use best practices and manage our risk appropriately. We are definitely on the leading edge of EMS delivery and while we are not THE organization by which all should be measured, many would be doing pretty well to do so.

But while we are definitely making huge strides and we have many accomplishments, we aren’t where we feel we should be. That is universally agreed upon in our organization. There is just too much to do, and while we are hitting the high priority items, there are so many things we want to do, and have begun doing, but there are only 24 hours in a day and finite resources otherwise at our disposal.

It is for the same reason, perhaps, that I should instead embrace the criticism of some in the knowledge that the minute we stop reassessing our service we become complacent. Don’t believe for a second that I don’t take the criticism personally, because although I shouldn’t, I do. Just as you know all the idiosyncrasies of your own children, you’d never stand for anyone else criticizing them. And, after 29 years of being part of the core individuals who pushed, pulled and shaped what is now known as our department, I have very little patience for the particular individuals who have come along since with a lot of criticism and no substantive contributions. My personal take on it, in fact, is that we have a list of people who would be happy to take their jobs.

Our line of reasoning, however, should be to embrace the constructive criticism that can be drawn from some of the comments. We should always perform self-critique, but self-critique is not self-immolation. We should always be pulling lessons from where we are and where we want to be, and the reason why we aren’t where we want to be. But this isn’t an effort to tell us what a bad job we are doing, but ways in which we need to improve.

The minute we begin to believe we are Number One in the county, the state, the region, or the nation, and we begin to believe we are “The Best”, we (all of us) tend to believe we can’t learn from others or from ourselves. It also demeans the rest of those who do an excellent job providing service with the resources they have in the community they must serve. Of all things, though, it’s pretty presumptuous again to suggest that we are the best at anything other than delivering the emergency services on Hilton Head Island, because really, that’s all that matters.

My own personal vision for our organization is to be one of those departments that others hold up to say, “This is the gold standard. This is how we want to be”. We continue to make leaps in that direction. We are, though, our own worst critics. We need to always be looking out for better ways to improve. Daily, we must try harder.

The effort must be placed on continual improvement. “Zero defects” is a pretty lofty goal, but in our business, zero defects may be the difference between life and death, between going home in the morning or going home in the hosebed of the rig under a pair of crossed aerials.

Never get complacent. Never believe you are the best, at least not for longer than it takes to get to the desired result, then to take a breath, look around, and say, “Where to from here?” The moment we stop, we die. We should always resolve to do better each time we are presented with a new challenge and to dig out whatever lessons we can observe from our current situation. There is no time to dwell on it, though. Digest it, make the adjustment, and move on.

We tend to think that one set of characteristics is independent of the other, when in fact, there are those who have learned to develop all of these qualities. Rhett Fleitz, over on Fire Critic, posed the question, “Who will be our new leaders in the fire service?” Who are tomorrow’s Brunos and Yvarras? Our Downeys and Dunns? The Brennans and the Brannigans? What did these people possess that we, perhaps, do not?

Maybe things like charisma, or an innate knowledge of what ideas stick and how to sell them to others? Or perhaps it is simply a passion for their ideas? Is it that they cared for others so much that they were/are compelled to share all of their riches, which in their cases were their vision of something better than the status quo?

If you look at my list, you’ll note that some of those names are no longer with us and some still are. While legends may grow after someone passes away, none of the individuals identified in my short list became legendary only after their demise. In fact, when they left us, they were very much in the leading edge. Those on the list who are still among us, although retired, are still sharing their passion with us today. They could easily have gone to hang out at the pool and sip Mimosas, but they still can be heard and seen, sharing their vision, and probably will up to the day they too leave us (hopefully nowhere near soon).

When you think about who these new visionaries are, do you say to yourself that they should be instruments of conveying today’s knowledge or are they those who share the idea of what it could be if we all apply ourselves? Because of today’s ability to reach out over the internet, I’d suggest there may be more “candidates” for those “positions”, simply because we were limited, in the early days of my career, to those who were able to come to me, or I to them. Now you can find an expert on every click of the mouse.

What constitutes the next leader of the fire service? Which qualities break someone out from the pack? You tell me. As far as I am concerned, we have lots of leaders now, and we have none. We should all be reaching out to exceed even what we perceive is our potential, understanding that the only limitations we possess are the ones we have given ourselves or gave permission to others to place on us. Until we can look past what is and look toward what can be, we will remain right here in our own existence. As Gandhi said, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” If you want to be the next leader, it’s yours to reach out and grab.

So I am left to wonder, does someone actually sit around and come up with some of those bizarre paragraphs?  Is that a job somewhere?  Is some mother distraught because her child, who she cared for and sent to a decent college is sitting around typing “jeans will advance concoction electric authoritatively patanol over the counter”? (I didn’t dare cut and paste it and thus have whatever link it is hanging out on my site).

I’m assuming that people actually click on some of that, which is why they send it out.  Otherwise, what is the point?  It reminds of of the point I was slowly getting to, and that’s whether or not a message of enlightened leadership is actually getting out to the leaders of our emergency services.  Why does it seem that we have so many in our midst that just don’t get it?

I was having a long discussion the other night with Ron Richards (withthecommand.com and Task Force 1 Training) and his wife, Linda, about the need for our industry, career and volunteer, to begin to agree on some real issues, or else we will continue on being the doormat we have been for decades.  I was pointing out that a lot of the problem rests on the shoulders of chiefs and other officers who have no vision beyond lunchtime, much less for the future.  Ron equated what we do to missionary work.  It’s like we are going out into the unknown, reaching out, and ultimately (hopefully) inspiring some others to also take up the cause.

As with those spam messages, I wonder if what we are saying sometimes falls on deaf ears.  Are we proclaiming the vision of something that can never be, because vested interest and egos will always keep firefighters fat, dumb and happy? Should we revel in the presence of the whackers and the unprofessionals, knowing they won’t likely be competing with us for our own jobs?

I take comfort in knowing there are others like us out there, and those who may not know they are yet, but will need to have the shade pulled up so they can see the light.  We will, of course, continue to do just that.  We need to show people that what we are telling them is true.  Our industry, the fire and rescue services, is on the brink of a sea change.  There are widely-accepted technologies and best practices that are being used daily out there that won’t see the inside of a fire station for at least another 10 years.  It’s a sad state of affairs, but with continually rising costs and continually shrinking budgets, we will have to continue to slog on.  And the only people we can blame this on is ourselves, because we failed to draw the right picture for others to understand where we were going and where we needed to be.

Be a missionary of change.  Illuminate the paths of others, so they can see where they are going.  Help those along who need a hand.  But of all things, strive to do the best job possible for your citizens.  They deserve it, and frankly, they are why you exist.  Treat them like it.

Lifted from the Canyon Lake Fire & EMS Facebook Page

I’m afraid my strategy for capturing the interest of the uninitiated has fallen through, so I’m going to have to return to preaching to the choir.  I guess it’s just as well; I’m not sure I want the lunatic fringe stalking around on my site anyway. It just so happens that I’m in the heart of Texas as I write this, talking about leadership to a class of firefighters at Canyon Lake Fire and EMS.  There are also a few from the Bulverde and Spring Branch departments and they seem like a great bunch.

I have had the opportunity to speak a little about what we should be doing as leaders, as well as what we shouldn’t be.  But regardless of how impressive our team is, we are probably all cursed with at least one individual on our team who simply doesn’t get it.  By saying they are “on the team”, it’s really only in the sense that they are assigned to your team and you haven’t found the way to move them along yet.

There are people out there who are surprisingly reluctant to get with the program.  Its as if they have some delusion that if they buck the system long enough, regardless of their piss-poor attitude, archaic methodologies, or lousy work ethic, some sea change will sweep down and save them from the rest of us.

While in my early days I was not the officer that I am today, I still have always said, if you stay off my radar, we can get along just fine.  While that may be an invitation to the slackers to do what they do best, in fact, the slackers find ways to get right up there in my sights and hoist a billboard pretty much saying, “Come and get me.”

I believe that if we give people our expectations, provide them the resources necessary, and provide feedback as they move along, we can get excellent results.  There are those, however, who are more interested in seeing how far they can push the boundaries.

If we (that is, the team) have a shared vision of excellence and we have a good plan to get there, and doing so is for the benefit of those we serve, and we have the approval of those people as well, what on God’s green earth would make anyone otherwise think that it is okay to steer the team in another direction.  My take on it is that if you are that unhappy, just go.  Find some other idiots who want to sit around and be negative and hang out with them.  I can think of plenty of places to find people like that, if you are looking.

I realize that I don’t have the greatest ideas and to some, they might even sound crazy, but at least I HAVE ideas.  I think, therefore, I am.  Those of us who, instead of sitting around bitching, come up with ways to solve problems, while we may always be chasing at things, we are at least moving forward to do so.

This group here in Texas is very fortunate.  Chief Wherry and his staff seem engaged and professional.  They have a bunch of attentive people who are polite and respectful.  The Canyon Lake department is a relatively young department and they don’t have a lot of baggage.  That being said, they are a department with a lot of growing to do and while the foundation seemed to be intact before we got here and will hopefully be strengthened by the time we are gone, it really comes down to what they do with what we have now given them.  From the best I can tell, I think they will be just fine.

We all have a job to do.

When it comes down to it, we don’t really know what’s in the hearts of anyone else, do we?  All we can do is read what people write and listen to what they say and watch their face to see if we are getting anywhere. The internet provides a place where anyone can feel brave and say what they want to say behind the anonymity of a computer terminal without fear of reprisal.

It’s those who feel the need to draw lines in the sand wherever they go that are probably the most disturbing.  Is it fire vs. EMS?  Career vs. volunteer?  East Coast vs. West Coast?  Rural vs. Urban?  European vs. North American? We all have a job to do and the job has different elements depending on where we are, what we are dealing with, and how we perceive the issues at hand.  Why fight about it?

If we were all the same, I could see being able to say who is better, but it’s the equivalent of comparing apples to elephants.  There are similarities in certain facets of the business, but really, as we have said on here a hundred times, emergency service delivery is a very specialized business in your unique community.  There aren’t too many tenders wandering the streets of Manhattan, and conversely, there aren’t many six-man truck companies in rural Arkansas.  Saying one is better than the other is ridiculous; they don’t compare.

Anymore it seems like the nameless and faceless just want to stir up controversy for the sake of stirring up controversy.  Of course, it’s easy to stir up controversy if you have no fear of reprisal.  There used to be a certain argument that the controversy was there to open up minds and to inject fresh ideas, and given some recent posts I have been watching, I am inclined to say that I saw no new ideas or the championing of best practices.  I didn’t see people fighting injustice with their secret identity.  Instead I saw bullies and provocateurs making illogical statements and specifically baiting others, just to get a rise out of someone.

It’s a product of our society, I guess.  We can all be intimately connected yet have enough distance between each other to feel safe.  People bemoan how uncivil society has become, but forget that when we were all cooped up in our little neighborhoods, if someone acted in a manner contrary to the social mores, they became quickly ostracized.  Living in a community with others you had to get along with meant that associating with provocateurs wasn’t safe.  Now we can align with people who espouse all kinds of wild ideas and don’t fear anyone, because really, how will anyone know?

Firefighting and other public safety personnel were always respected because honestly, these people were part of our community too.  We didn’t do things that hurt others because we felt a certain connection to them.  We went to school and church with them.  We were likely related in some form or fashion.  Our parents knew one another.  These days, there’s enough distance that you can be the bully you always wanted to be and hide your 95-pound weakling body behind the monitor.  If you treated people like that in your old neighborhood, you’d likely have the crap beaten out of you.

I believe there is a certain amount of merit to having a pseudonym, if it is used for good, and especially if you know that saying the right thing will have detrimental consequences.  But I don’t see so much of that these days as the other, the troll who just wants to make spurious statements and not have to back them up.  There’s nothing I love more than reading through a thread of meaningless diatribe to find out the idiot on one end is some Junior with the wacker-pack and a keyboard.

If you really want our industry to be recognized as professionals, it requires conduct that is professional.  It requires discussion and exposition of ideas, but it doesn’t have any room for intolerance or illogical thought.  We must remain open to the perspective of others, regardless of whether they are the aforementioned Junior or the saltiest jake on the truck.  But being respective and considerate of other ideas doesn’t mean that we have to lay down and sing Kumbaya if someone is being a troll.  Maybe we need to call some of these people out, or even better yet, ignore them, and perhaps they will go away.  We all have a responsibility to project what we desire in our society as a good example, and to guide the poor examples either toward enlightenment or toward the exit.  In either case, it requires action, not ignorance.

An OLD shot of Savannah's LifeStar landing for a Hilton Head Island F/R medevac.

The SC-TF1 Director copied an article to our command staff that I found interesting.  It ran in Popular Mechanics titled Unacceptable Risk (I couldn’t find a direct URL for it, so here’s the pdf: HelicopterCrash).

Our organization allows paramedics on scene to request a medical helicopter evacuation with a minimum amount of oversight by the medical control physician.  Being a paramedic myself, I know when to call for a flight and when not to.  I am not about to call for a chopper to take a patient to a hospital for a broken foot, and likewise, I am intelligent enough to be able to assess a patient and opt to fly them to a hospital that has the resources to help my critically injured victim.  I am appalled at some of the case histories where someone was flown out for a routine (very routine) injury and consequently, I know of agencies who simply won’t call for a flight, regardless of the need for it.

How bad of a medic must you be that you can’t tell the difference between a potentially life-threatening injury and one that can be transported by ground to a hospital?  If I’ve got an altered patient with a potential head injury, I know they need to go to a trauma center.  So what if I have to go on an out-of-jurisdiction transport to the trauma center- it’s what we do.

Regardless of whether or not the aeromedical evacuation of a patient is risky and may or may not have tangible benefit, the decision must come to this: What do I need to do for the best interest of the patient? I don’t care if you don’t like the way they look, or they stink, or you are tired.  When you became a medical response professional, you probably took an oath that involved a statement like “Above All, Do No Harm”.  Our jobs involve making sure our patients not only get care, but that it is the right care, it is not care that is provided at a huge cost because we were too lazy to do our jobs, and that the patient’s rights are maintained in their treatment and transport to a medical facility (or not).

Just as I wouldn’t make you take a treatment that could possibly kill you in order to cover my ass, ordering a helovac for a finger amputation isn’t in my first line of thought.  And I know I curse and fuss when I DO call for a chopper and a spot of rain on the pilot’s windshield causes them to scrub the mission, but you know what? I’m a big boy- I’d MUCH rather you err on the side of keeping your crew and my patient safe and I’ll deal with the fallout otherwise.  But to just say, “All patients go by air” or much worse, “No patients go by air” is ridiculous.

Maybe like everything else, we need to stop applying a broad brush to a situation and do our jobs, by appropriately assessing our patient, determining their logical needs based on mechanism of injury, observable findings, and our experience, and make a good call as to what to do with them.  If we ca’t do this much, it’s no wonder we continue to have to convince people we aren’t just “ambulance drivers” but real, live, medical professionals.

South Carolina US&R Task Force at Vigilant Guard

As is always the case in times like these, fire and emergency service providers stand ready to send whatever relief is necessary to aid the survivors of disasters.   While we continue to keep the residents and visitors to Haiti in our thoughts and prayers, an open letter to the fire and emergency service community from FEMA Deputy Administrator Richard Serino reminds the response community that self-deployment to the disaster areas is not advisable.  For a number of reasons, there needs to be a coordinated response so that well-meaning people and resources don’t ultimately overwhelm what is already bedlam.

While it may seem counterintuitive to some not to send EVERYTHING to the region, I’m reminded of the scenario that presents itself in football when the defensive end is told repeatedly, “Seal the ends and don’t let anyone out” and after being told that twenty times (and having no backs running around the end), he decides to “get involved” and leaves his assigned area, only to be left in the dust by a screen or a reverse.  His job was to protect the flanks from just such a move, and failing that, this weakness was not only recognized by the offense, but exploited.

It is imperative that we take this opportunity to recognize that these disasters also affect our own communities, and this is the time when increased education of your customers is important: what to do if something like this happens here, who will respond, what your capabilities are and how you plan to address your needs in a disaster, and so on.  This is the time when you contact your representatives and reinforce to them that we have emergency operation plans in place and resources, and educate local responders what to do and how to obtain these resources.

Most importantly, someone needs to be watching the outside, anticipating that at any time, events can also happen at home.  In that event, teams selected to move into the Caribbean to aid Haiti may need reinforcement back in their home jurisdictions and we should be ready to help in those situations as well.

Everyone has a part on the team.  Take this unfortunate situation and at least turn it into a “teachable moment”.  If you fail to do this while it is fresh in the minds of the public, I can reassure you, look at past disasters and see how fast those moments faded from view.  We can prevent death and injury often by educating people as to what we do and how to get us when they need us.  But in order to do all of this, we need support, not just during the disasters, but in the times in between.

Keep our fellow US&R teams in your prayers as well as the citizens and other responders in this most distressing of situations and make sure we are ready if anything else goes down on our watch.

Hilton Head Island Fire Station 7

It’s that time of the year that we hear the word “presents” often enough to make your ears bleed, so I was wondering if my misuse of the word “presents” got your attention. Apparently it did, or you wouldn’t be reading this now.  Or maybe you didn’t notice.   If you didn’t notice, go and look again: when we speak of “command presence”, we speak of the characteristics of the person in charge to lead from a strong, visible, and decisive point of view, not “presents” like a gift.  Having strong leader-like characteristics  as part of your daily personality could be a “present”, if your job is to be a leader.  It also could be very annoying to the people around you.

According to my family and friends, acquaintances, and the Myers-Briggs (and every other psych profile I’ve ever gone through), I exhibit decisive, directive behavior as part of my normal personality.  More often than I care to, my “command presence” comes out when I’m talking with my wife (she doesn’t like it), my kids (they’re not crazy about it either), or my colleagues (they probably think I’m insufferable anyway).  This just goes to show you there is a time and place for everything.  Explaining to your daughter the intricacies of math, for one, is probably not a good time to be strong, visible and decisive.

Likewise, when you are leading firefighters into emergency situations, it is not a time to be easy-going, reserved, and willing to compromise.  There are those out there who are; they are also the ones with crews free-lancing, poor accountability, mixed commands, and poor coordination.  These are also the ones who get people hurt and killed.

While you don’t have to be the second coming of Field Marshal Rommel, you should understand that the fireground or rescue scene is the place where only one person can be in charge.  Coupled with the observation that leadership abhors a vacuum, you can probably understand that if you fail to establish a clear picture of who is in charge, someone else will.  It’s not the act of having a fist fight to decide who that is; the only person who can be in charge is the legally responsible incident commander.  How that decision is made is pertinent to the laws of your jurisdiction, but if you have someone who can’t command, they probably shouldn’t be in that position.

All too often, I see failure in company officers who are “best buds” with their troops on a daily basis, and then can’t understand why there’s so much chaos on their incident scene.  It is simply because those people don’t necessarily see you as the “alpha dog”.  To them, you are just another “member of the pack”.  Other members of the pack don’t call the shots, the alpha dog does.  And like I said, if you aren’t filling that role, someone else is.  That person will also be the one that when things go south, everyone turns toward for the answers.

In this time of giving, give your subordinates a lesson in leadership.  Your leadership should set a positive example, a role model, if you will, for your aspiring officers.  Command and control is important on the emergency scene and failing to work with that does not instill confidence in the abilities of the IC.  It is essential that not only do your charges see you as a leader on the scene, but in the station as well, for if they do not, on the scene is a bad place for them to convince them of that.  Make it a “present” to the people you are responsible for teaching and watching over.  Give them the tools to lead others, and they will hopefully show you that they trust your leadership, and when the time comes, they will walk on that path as well.

How can we help you today?

Are you a fire department or are you an EMS service?  Do you do both?  The knee-jerk reaction I sometimes get was one coined by a previous chief, “We are an EMS agency providing fire service”.  In fact, it sounds so clever that there are a vocal few who like to throw that out there time and time again, like they were the ones who originally came up with the concept (they’re paramedics, so they’re a little biased, I’m sure).

Something I said in a much earlier blog bears repeating:  customer relations are essential for any department operating in this day and age.  There are those who continue to disagree with the use of the word “customer” when referring to those who use our service.  Respectfully, I also continue to insist that just because they don’t walk into your shop and buy something doesn’t mean they don’t have a choice in using your service.  Taxpayers may not be able to change providers, but with enough votes, they can radically change your organization.

The world can change overnight.  If you think the current model of how we provide service is going to last another 200 years, think again.  As our customers become more educated and expect more innovation from government, look for them to insist on ways we can do things better.  We need to continuously and constantly evaluate our direction and possibly even reinvent  our concepts in order to stay out front.  Good customer service revolves around recognizing the needs of our customers and using our skills, abilities and past experience to improve service quality and to provide excellent service.

As has happened over really the last thirty years, our industry has evolved into one that defies definition, one that more and more reflects all-hazard response.  I’m going to go on record to say that I’m even confused as to what to call us anymore.  There’s a famous paragraph in Report From Engine 82 (Dennis Smith) that I’ll paraphrase, because I can’t remember it exactly.

In this city, when you turn on a wall switch, you may or may not get a light.  When you turn a faucet, you may or may not get water.  If you pick up a phone, you may or may not get a dial tone.  But everybody knows that if you pull the handle on that red box, you WILL get a fire truck.

The purpose of my poorly remembered paraphrasing of that statement was to illustrate that times have not changed from when the book was published in 1972; just substitute “call 9-1-1″ for “pull the handle on that red box”.  But what we have become has, as we become EMTs and HAZMAT Technicians and Water Rescue Technicians and etc., etc.  I read “Report” cover to cover when it first came out (I was eight- I’m a good reader) and the context of that paragraph has stuck with me forever.  Dennis Smith points out in his story how the fire department was used to handle plumbing issues, to handle overdoses, and to handle pretty much anything up to and including, things that happen to be burning.

So back to customer service; what is our mission?  Why do we exist?  If your answer is, “To protect people from fire” or “To help the sick and injured”, I’d suggest that maybe you should reconsider all of those calls that don’t meet that definition as distracting you from that mission.  If you’re anything like me and the organization I work for, I’d say that not handling those calls is probably counter to the needs of your community.  And what your mission should really be, is defined by those needs.

When someone dials 9-1-1 (or whatever they dial in your community), they do so because they have a problem they can’t handle themselves (or should I say they don’t know how to handle), they don’t have the resources to handle the problem, and they don’t have anywhere to turn for an answer.  Obviously, you are saying, “Well, if my pipes are leaking, why wouldn’t I call the plumber?”  Again, think about the ENTIRE situation.  Maybe they can’t afford a plumber.  Maybe they can’t find a plumber to come out.  Maybe they are totally freaked out by the situation and not thinking clearly.  There are many answers to the question, but the long and short of it is, they trust YOU to help them solve the problem and YOU are the people they call.

So what I’m telling you is that our job REALLY is to respond to a request for help, gather facts about the problem, analyze the options, apply a solution, and ultimately, stabilize the situation.  We may not FIX the problem, but when we leave, things should at least be stable.  We really don’t need doctor-wannabes or adrenaline junkies for our job, what we need are people who can look at any situation and understand the situation, then apply creativity using the resources at hand (either on site or on that BRT you brought) to stabilize their situation.  And further along that line, we’re not asking these individuals to rebuild the house, we’re asking them to stop the forward progress of the damaging element (or disease process or whatever it is) and return some means of order to chaos.  We’re not building a piano here, we’re improvising and hopefully we’ll come out with something that can at least pass for a musical instrument of some sort.

What should our business be called?  What is it that we do?  How can we possibly have meaning in our life if we don’t have a label or title for our life’s ambition?  When I hear of the trash guy being called a “Sanitation Technician”  or a dog-walker a “Pet Care Specialist”, I wonder what title really defines what it is we do.  What it really comes down to is that everyone recognizes the title for your job more than you could ever know.  When someone asks me what I do for a living, I answer, “I’m a Firefighter”.  The knowing look on their faces and the subsequent questions about my job, my worst call, my most stupid call, etc. confirm for me that most everyone understands what our job is really all about.  Now the bigger goal is to get those of us who do it to understand that as well.