Is diversity a good thing in public
safety?
Alan Perry
December 2, 2014
Diversity is defined as “The fact or quality of being
diverse; difference; a point or respect in which things differ; variety or
multiformity”, according to The American
Heritage Dictionary. Having a diverse workforce has clear advantages, but
what purpose does diversity serve in determining how to best treat a patient or
mitigate an emergent situation? Is it just the way it has always been done, do “best
practices” really matter, or is it that we just think our way is the best and
that’s that? Why does every station, agency, municipality, region and state
have a different set of policies, procedures and structure? I would argue that
some degree of diversity is necessary to accommodate variations in resources
and the needs of the public, but that only goes so far. We have gone to great
lengths to establish national standards for EMS & Fire training,
certification and best practices for activities in these realms, yet we are
slow to adopt and implement them uniformly. We work in positions of public
trust, as such we should move aggressively toward earning and retaining that
trust by providing services that are prudent, proven and effective.
You may recall a story of an ancient city called Bable, its
tale is told in the Hebrew Bible in the book of Genesis, chapter 11, verses
4-9. In this story a great civilization arose (public safety) and sought to
meet their god in person (a perfect world). To accomplish this they all
collaborated to construct a great tower (policies, procedures, etc.). As it
were, the Lord had reservations about this and sought to thwart their efforts
and thus confused their communications via creating many languages (diversity) where
there was once one, thus preventing them from obtaining their goal. While our
goal is somewhat less lofty, I find it perplexing that we ourselves have
imposed this confounding practice of diversity on our organizations willingly.
To be fair, we did have to develop our own systems before any of the best
practices were yet discovered (with the exception of our stubborn indifference
to the EMS Agenda for the Future and its subsequent reiterations.). This does
not absolve us from the responsibility of setting things right. We must now
deconstruct our defective structures and rebuild using sound and proven
practices.
I understand the pessimism some of you have about the
ability of these leaders to put aside business as usual and turf battles to
create a true regional system. Doing so could transform public safety into a
much better integrated and responsive framework that can serve the citizens,
and the professionals that have chosen to serve, in a much more efficient and
effective manner. These leaders may be
justifiably concerned with control of resources and allocation of those
resources to the communities they are charged with protecting. Some, if not
all, of these localities are already stretched thin on some key assets such as
ambulances and paramedics. Will the region take the next step and begin
reallocating resources across boundaries to solve response issues?Regionalization is an attainable goal but should not be used
to solve individual department’s shortcomings with staffing and resource
allocation.
The cost of change is significant, but if done collectively
could produce significant improvements in efficiency and effectiveness that
will outweigh and justify the cost. We are a long way from national EMS
protocols or standard staffing models, but state and regional models are already
in place that should serve as examples for Fire and EMS systems as they move
toward a more integrated and uniform approach to providing services. Imagine if
every firefighter and EMS provider was trained to employ tools and methods that
were proven to work and adopted as a best practice by NFPA and/or NREMT (or for
that matter VDFP and VAOEMS). The need for agency specific operational policy
and protocols would be minimized instantly. Training, logistics and
administration could be streamlined and regionalized with little difficulty. It
might even be possible to fill those staffing holes with some of the administrative
staff that would be out of work.
Happy days indeed,
Alan
