The initial step is to establish in your organization the mindset that every company officer upon arrival at an incident will bring professional and respectful calm to what is a chaotic scene.Doing so is as simple as making eye contact, a brief professional introduction and an inquiry. Follow that with excellent service. Sometimes, because of the critical nature of the emergency, a company officer might need to prioritize his actions by looking a would-be helpful bystander in the eyes and saying, “I need to address a few critical issues right now. Please stay here and I will get back to you as soon as I can. Thank you.” Then don’t forget to get back to that person.
Next, if our crews do not close the loop on “human needs” during the last three minutes of our presence at the emergency scene, then we are likely to earn a green form (customer complaint). Addressing human needs involves such activities as explaining our actions to family, friends and even bystanders; acknowledging the helpfulness of bystanders; asking whether there are any outstanding needs or concerns; and looking for opportunities to hit a customer service grand slam homerun.
Here’s an example of what I mean. Generally, I receive the greatest volume of praise for my crews related to what they do when their primary actions are over. Recently, a crew treated a patient who injured himself while trimming his trees. After the patient was taken to the hospital, and while nobody was around to see their actions, my crew cleaned his entire yard. Sometimes the actions are much smaller, but equally valued, and I literally could list a hundred other real-life examples without much effort. For every example that made it to my desk, there are many other examples that never get formally captured. It is that culture of service that shaped the recent overhaul of our mission statement from something that sounded like a philosophical haiku to the simple statement of “We care for you.”
This brings us to your next step, which is get your entire organization to understand that the final impression anyone involved in an incident — victim or bystander — develops about your department depends largely on whether they received caring, compassionate and informative outreach from your members. This must happen every time, even on those incidents we determine to be minor. They aren’t minor to everyone, and you never know what needs or concerns you may uncover by reaching out.
Before closing out this blog, I’d like to share one other observation about the five most impactful minutes of every incident: they are good for the soul. Firefighters see too much human tragedy for them to deny themselves any opportunity to do something that satisfies their subconscious need to connect to the healing process. We treat and move on to the next call. We put out the fire, pick up the hose, and go back into service. We move on to being ready for the next emergency before we’ve fully closed out the one we are on. Many emergency responders attempt to build up a wall that may allow them to do this throughout their careers. We sometimes avoid a real connection with people in order to shield ourselves — as best we can — from the loss or pain of our customers.
I believe there is a healthier way of addressing our emotional needs that can be found in making the most of those final three minutes. Please do not misunderstand the intent of the final three minutes. The final three minutes are NOT about fishing for praise like a bellhop waiting for a tip at the hotel door after delivering luggage. It is about connecting with people, filling in gaps, and playing a small role in helping move the emergency to closure. For our customers and our crews, this is a very healthy process. Imagine closing out every incident with the mindset of a caring neighbor rather than with the return-to-service-quickly mentality exhibited by many emergency response crews.
Garret Olson is chief of the Scottsdale (Ariz.) Fire Department.
