Leadership

US Fire Administration Emergency Vehicle Safety Initiative WHY YOU NEED TO READ IT: Are you tasked with leadership, supervision or education of firefighters, police or EMS providers that operate motor vehicles. All hands up? Great, then this document is for you! READ ON:

A Fire Medic Perspective: Delivering Customer Service with Lights and Sirens. Rom Duckworth discusses how a culture of customer service can work in the real-world with retired Battalion Chief (and prolific author) Rob Avsec.

A Fire Medic Perspective: A Chief’s Challenges of Change with retired (but still incredibly active) Chief Dennis Rubin, formerly serving as Chief of Washington DC, Atalanta, GA, Norfolk, VA, and Dothan, AL Fire Departments.  

The chief emphasized that he didn't mean that all of his people were acting like children, although the look in his eye implied that maybe some were. I wasn't suggesting anything about the maturity of his people, but rather that parents don't stop being parents when their children grow up. In fact, this is exactly what I meant by helping agency leaders acting like parents rather than substitute teachers.

Rom Duckworth speaks with Dave Statter about first due videos, the outsider perspective of the fire service, the echo chamber effect, the videos he won’t show, and the answer to the question “When Has THAT Ever Happened in the Fire Service?”

FICEMS WHY YOU NEED TO READ IT: The gears of FICEMS will no doubt grind slowly, but if your agency has any kind of EMS response component you’ll want to know which direction they’re turning. There aren’t any shockingly new ideas here, but it is a good breakdown of where EMS in the United States needs to be moving. WHAT ...

The biggest problem… With today’s social media use policies are the gigantic swaths of “gray area” that shroud some issues. Not only do statutes and regulations vary tremendously from state to state and workplace to workplace, but as social media case law develops it can be difficult to determine how key phrases such as “free speech”, “privacy protection”, and “on-the-job” ...

Effective communication is a challenge that we face in every facet of emergency response. One of the most difficult challenges encountered by new educators and leaders looking to move “from buddy to boss” is building credibility and personal authority. Many of us work hard at it every day of our career and get it right most of the time, but ...

You’re smart. Make sure your goals are too! Do you make effective goal setting a habit or a luxury? On an emergency call, in station, or in your personal life have you set goals for yourself or others that seemed so clear when you set out, but somehow fell apart when you actually started work? Setting and accomplishing goals is ...

In this episode we see “The National Fire Academy: Not Just Fire Anymore” as we talk with Michael Stern, EMS Training Specialist for the National Fire Academy.