The Fire Department Instructor’s Conference is my grown-up version of Christmas. I have missed few conferences since I attended my first one when I was assigned to the Academy. Significant others, friends and family believe that THIS is my vacation trip every year.
Hands On Training sessions (HOT) run on Monday and Tuesday. Bobby Halton, Fire Engineering Editor-in-Chief and FDIC Education Director posted the following note on Twitter Tuesday night (HERE):
20,000 plus of the best completed over 38 workshops and participated in over 150 hands on training evolutions at the worlds best show FDIC
Classroom presentations start Wednesday and run through Saturday. Exhibit Hall runs Thursday through Saturday.
TUESDAY CHECK-IN
Driving into Indianapolis, I miss the RCA dome landmark (see destruction HERE) and see another hotel under construction near the Indiana Convention Center. FDIC is one of the four largest annual events at Indianapolis, with 30,000 attendees and probably 10,000 vendors, staff and family members.
First step is to get the “Badge Holder” from registration. That includes the Show Guide and other items. The registration staffer mentions that they had about 25,000 attendees pre-register, about 5,000 more than last year. They have had some cancellations from fire departments that were cutting their budget. Do not know how the financial situation will impact the on-site, walk-in, registrations.
PAYING IN FULL FOR ADVANCED REGISTRATION IN 2010
The second step is to complete the advanced registration for the 2010 conference. One reason the 2009 preregistration was much higher was due to an opportunity presented at last year’s conference. By registering and paying for the 2009 conference at the 2008 conference, you get an opportunity to apply for housing in September, months before other attendees or vendors can submit their requests.
For the first time in a decade, I am in an affordable hotel adjacent to the convention center.
A STEAK ‘N SHAKE LUNCH
On the first floor of the parking garage on the left side of the picture above is a 24 hour Steak ‘n Shake diner. Mmmm, chocolate shake … steakburger …
BRISK BUSINESS IN FDIC CLOTHING AND FIRE ENGINEERING BOOKS/VIDEOS
While the hallway vendors were setting up for Wednesday, the Pennwell booths are open and crowded. Chief John Salka, taking a break from his HOT presentation, signed his new book, The Engine Company. I also got John Norman’s Fire Department Special Operations text.
I had other business in the city, but did make time to duck into the Indianapolis Motor Speedway’s Hall of Fame Museum.
Yeah, it feels like a vacation, hanging out with a few of my like-minded colleagues.
Mike “FossilMedic” Ward
A couple of the responses to December’s confrontation at Task Force 1 included a reference to the HBO series “
Nursing Is A Profession, Firefighting Is A Hobby and Paramedics Are Caught In The Middle
Comments OffHe was a thirty-something probationary firefighter and I asked what his first career was. Turns out it was firefighting. He spent over a decade as a career firefighter in a large west coast fire department, rising to the rank of captain. Ailing parents brought him and his wife back to the east, where he spent almost four years getting to this point in his Virginia firefighting career.
He applied for a job at every fire department from Richmond to Baltimore. Over a year went by before he was hired by a moderate sized county fire department, where he spent a dozen weeks in recruit school. He finally was hired by the largest northern Virginia fire department where, two years after graduating from one Virginia recruit school, he is starting a second recruit school … that will lead to the same Virginia certifications he already earned.
Meanwhile, his wife had no problem obtaining immediate employment as a registered nurse at a hospital. It is this staggering lack of career mobility that leads me to label firefighting as a hobby. One of the speakers at last week’s National Association of EMS Educators reminded me of this “recruit.”
The speaker started as a registered nurse from a diploma school in Los Angeles. Hospitals and health departments ran vocational registered nurse training thirty years ago. He also became a National Registry EMT-Paramedic. Because his ambulance agency worked in both Ventura and Los Angeles, he had to maintain paramedic certification from both counties. Moving to another state, he had no problem with his registered nursing credentials, but needed to take a “paramedic refresher course” and sit for a state paramedic exam, even though he already held a national registry EMT-P certification.
Nursing, firefighting and ems have moved forward since the 1960s, but with significantly different outcomes. Since 1996 the vocational registered nursing diploma programs were edged out by community college associate degree programs. Nursing leaders are advocating replacement of the associate degree with the bachelor’s of science as the minimum academic level for a registered nurse. Regardless of how you earned your registered nursing credentials, RNs are able to move throughout the country without needing to re-qualify because of a geographic change. The same is true for most professions.
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Since the 1966 Wingspread conference, the fire service has talked a lot about professionalizing the career. Some notable accomplishments are the NFPA 1000 Professional Qualification standards, Degree-at-a-Distance undergraduate program, expansion of the American Council of Education accreditation of selected programs, Chief Fire Officer Designation [http://publicsafetyexcellence.org/ ]and the Fire and Emergency Services Higher Education model curriculums [http://www.usfa.dhs.gov/nfa/higher_ed//feshe_direction.shtm ].
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Unfortunately, entry to fire department employment remains restricted to the bottom and top of the organization chart. It is telling that both of the Harvard University three-week summer programs provide no academic credit, either for fire chiefs or union leaders. The $11,000 programs provide an intense and valuable experience for the attendees, taught by Harvard University faculty. The university has not provided a mechanism to award academic credit for these programs.
EMS started as a Department of Transportation vocational training program thirty years ago. By 2009 it will reflect the nursing model, moving into the scope of practice model. We are about two-thirds through this change, with the release of the second draft of the National Emergency Medical Services Scope of Practice Educational Standards draft next month.
There will be four levels of ems provider: Emergency Medical Responder, Emergency Medical Technician, Advanced Emergency Medical Technician and Paramedic. Deb Cason, an EMS program director for the University of Texas Southwest Medical Center, is the project leader. This link takes you to a 13 page, 1.2 Megabyte .pdf handout of a presentation Professor Cason made about the program and process: http://www.dshs.state.tx.us/emstraumasystems/Cason_DevEduStandards.pdf
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The comment period for the second draft will close January 2008. Go to http://www.nemses.org/ to review the standards and provide feedback. There will be a stakeholder’s meeting in February 2008 in Washington DC. The NHTSA contact calls for the submission of the final EMS Scope of Practice by August 2008.
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One of the challenges with the incoming EMS educational standards is the requirement that the person in charge of a paramedic training program have a bachelor’s degree. I was surprised to learn that some directors of the 400+ paramedic training programs have yet to achieve an associate degree, much less a bachelor or graduate degree.
The EMS Scope of Practice provides an opportunity for 50,000 practicing paramedics to have the same professional mobility enjoyed by 2.7 million registered nurses. A pity is that the fire service is farther along the professional path, yet may never provide the same type of professional mobility to the 350,000 people who make firefighting their career.
Mike “FossilMedic” Ward