Celebrating Your Hidden Helpers
The second week of April celebrates a group dear to my heart: 911 dispatchers. They are the ones you’ll talk to if/when you are in the throes of a need for emergency assistance. At that moment, surely, your heart rate will be elevated, you will feel an urgent need for help, and you will be grateful for that calm professional who answers your call: the dispatcher, or, in modern lingo, the emergency telecommunicator.
My first professional gig in this world of managing chaos and mayhem was behind a dispatch console. It was the bad old days, when processes and technologies were still emerging. My training consisted of watching another dispatcher for a week, and then I was turned loose under the watchful eye of Kay, my supervisor, who sat across the open lobby in her other role as the chief’s exec assistant. There were two or three radio microphones, telephones connected to their handsets with phone cords (!), a Selectric typewriter (with correcting ribbon – woo!) so we could also do the police department’s clerical work. During my first week solo, alarms and ringers went off that hadn’t happened to go off during my “training.” I could only hope they didn’t signal anything dire while I figured them out.
The USS 911 Lifesaver award recognizes the role a 911 dispatcher played in a patient's survival. (Photo/Sgt. CayeLynn Duchow)
A high-speed chase down I-70 and onto the side streets of Vail Valley erupted soon after I started the job. Helpful citizens kept ringing in with reports. The police, state patrol, fire department, and others couldn’t go direct with one another on their radios. Everything had to funnel through my completely-overwhelmed self. Fortunately, Kay stepped in and adeptly handled the situation. Afterwards, we had pizza out on the front steps of dispatch, and I cried. (I was sure, at that moment, that I was way over my head, but it did get better.)
How far we’ve come since the mid-1970s! Training and technologies make dispatch centers nearly unrecognizable to me. Telecommunicators sit at consoles stacked with computer monitors with an amazing array of tools to deliver responders to your scenes. While you’re waiting, many will offer “pre-arrival instructions,” everything from basic bleeding control to CPR. They’ll stay on the line with terrified callers as they hide from an assailant. They’ll help you deliver babies. On the other hand, they’re there, too, for responders, delivering whatever additional help or resources they need, and keeping watch over their safety, too. These dedicated men and women are as much a part of every emergency scene as anyone—all without getting out of their chairs at the dispatch communications center.
Dispatching is a thankless job—always has been. Hidden from public view, behind the scenes and yet in the midst of the often-dramatic and usually stressful events unfolding out in the light of day (or dark of night), their disembodied voices represent the link to answers for a host of demands. Yet all you know of these important people are the sounds of their voices. When a scene is frazzled and demanding and dangerous and frightening, hearing a calm “I-got-your-back” type of voice on the radio is a moment of true grace.
What few among the general public know is, however, that in many places, emergency dispatchers aren’t even recognized as first responders. According to the Journal of Emergency Dispatch, “At issue is the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC), which puts emergency dispatchers in the same category as “Office and Administrative Support Occupations....Despite strong support from public safety, the 2018 release did not change the clerical designation to the Protective Service Occupations category of law enforcement, firefighting, and lifesaving (paramedics). The next update is 2028. [Source: https://iaedjournal.org/reclassifying-emergency-dispatchers, accessed April 16, 2021]
The current SOC classification “fails to give emergency dispatchers recognition for a job with responsibilities that has grown exponentially over the past decades and skimps on benefits comparable to the Protective Service Occupations,” it was reported. Fortunately, some efforts are underway in some states to do the right thing. After all, a public safety telecommunicator isn’t just sitting there pushing buttons. He or she is actually the first first responder! Don’t they deserve the same credit (and benefits) of the rest of the emergency responder team?
I know that if I applied for a job in a dispatch center nowadays, my road to being a competent and skilled telecommunicator would be lengthy and challenging. As Matt Grogan, a longtime dispatcher in Chicago and Las Vegas said, “Emergency dispatchers are highly trained individuals handling critical situations. We literally breathe life into people by what we do.”
How can we help? Appreciation in any form is always, well, appreciated. People in emergency service rarely get thanks, not that they’re looking for it. That means that when something like a note (or food! Food is always popular!) turns up, it’s very nice. And should you ever see anything in your local area about efforts to elevate the status of your emergency telecommunicators to that of the rest of the first responder team, please support them. It’s the least we can do.
