Training or Continued Education

They call it perishable skills training.  They call it continued education and training.  Whatever name you want to put on those 'x' amount of hours of required training a year, it is a mandated and tracked job requirement in my state. But yet my agency is very good about not enforcing the point.  And hasn't been noticed.

Correction, they are not respectful of the requirements for the dispatchers.

There are many excuses.  We run 24/7 with six dispatchers.  (Hopefully number 7 joins us soon.)  Rarely is there training nearby, so requires transportation, hotel and meals reimbursement.  The lack of variety of courses that will benefit the department (their view).

A couple of us have taken it upon ourselves to utilize the on-line courses through our state POST.  That was good until we took all they had to offer.  Even our state POST website is very limited on dispatcher online courses.

Why is it that dispatch, in particular the dispatchers, are so far down the training food chain?

When I started dispatching (yes, in a different century) there was no formal training beyond, "Here is the mike, push this little silver button to be heard.  Here is a paper log to write down what you say and what they say plus the times."  Yep, that really was my first basic dispatcher training.

I eventually worked for a larger agency, still using paper logs but now had the advantage of a foot pedal to talk on the radio.  But there was still no requirement for dispatcher training by the state.  Which meant there was little in standardized training.  I remember going to meetings with other dispatchers from the area and brainstorming ideas of what should be standardized in training and get the state POST to require such training.

When our family started to grow, and both hubby and I working shift work, and no family nearby, I made the switch to a job with more regular hours.  Here's a laugh for you.  I went to cosmetology school (this isn't the punch line yet)... 1600 hours later received my certificate to take the state board exam for my cosmetology license. Here's the punch line (want to make sure you don't miss it)... it took me longer to get my license to use a pair of scissors on someone's hair than it did for hubby to complete the Police Academy.

When I returned to dispatching a few years later there was (tah dah) the requirement of 120 hours (3 weeks) of academy training by state POST!  What?  Three, three, threeeee weeks?  That's all?  But at least a step in the right direction.  Everyone receiving some standardized training.

Now to get back to the requirement of 24 hours of continued education accrued over a 24 month (yes over two years) period.  Ugh.  Not that big of a deal, right?  A couple shifts a year and we meet the state POST requirements.  So why do we have to work so hard to get our department to give us the hours?

The very large agency I worked for, before my current small (yeah) agency, met the continued education requirements cleverly.  They purchased numerous training CD's from our state POST (most of them geared towards officers but that wasn't a big issue) that were anywhere from two hours to four hours in length.  Sometimes there would be two or four of us watching a CD.  Or one of us would on our computer during slow periods.

I have suggested we "borrow" these CD's and those shifts when there are two dispatchers on duty, have one watching a training CD.  If each dispatcher watched one CD a month we would easily meet the state POST requirements and it wouldn't be a financial burden on the agency.

Five years later.... still not happening.

How does your agency handle the continued education/training for dispatchers?

Flashbacks

Yesterday was one of those rare days of overtime in my new (well, more than a year now) smaller agency. Have gotten use to working only 40 hours a week compared to my prior large agency where if I only worked 45 hours a week it was a light week.

I took a walk during my break and saw a former co-worker from the other agency. She was one of the "B's" who if they didn't like you would make fun of you. It was her sister who was the major "B" who created such drama inside the dispatch center that I changed shifts and days off to attempt to have as little cross over shift work with her as possible.

I had filed a couple complaints against the major "B" on harassment and of course, nothing was truly done. Accountability from co-workers and supervisors will be a point of discussion another time.

The rest of my day was a "roll tape" of memories of my years with the larger agency. Some of the good times, but mostly of the harassment and pokes received from some of the "B's" of the larger agency.

They ran the dispatcher center. If you weren't part of the inner circle, nothing you did was acceptable, they would yell at you across the room with dumb ass questions, sabotage your calls with incomplete information when working the radio, refuse to take their share of phone call traffic, take longer than scheduled breaks, etc.

All day was a constant poke of yet another memory of their subtle, and not so subtle, attempts at breaking me and embarrassing me. I could not shake them out of my head, no matter what I tried. And my sleep was another run of dreams involving them and supervisors. Even in my dreams they were getting away from being held responsible for their actions.

I found out the sister I saw and the major "B" sister both took "stress" early retirements! WHAT?!?!?!?! They were the cause of sooooo much stress and drama in the dispatch center and they got stressed out enough to be medically retired?!?!?!?

I knew I was getting truly stressed out. I was getting to the end of my mental health rope. Ready to explode, yell, scream, cuss, deep sarcasm. Even get physical with at least one dispatcher. I knew I was getting bad, barely balancing on the edge, so I, like a responsible adult, decided I needed to leave and sought other employment. It meant a loss of pay, but I wouldn't end up fired or in jail, which neither included a paycheck.

And they got stress medical retirement??!??!??!

And more than a year later I am still getting flashbacks and stomach aches and losing sleep and nausea from memories of my time spent locked up with them in a windowless basement for over eight years.

And they are getting tax free medical retirement monies and getting their educations on my tax dollar?? Hell No. Where can I file for a review of their files? Who do I contact for a tax audit for them? How come they aren't being held accountable for their actions? UGH

Stress Relievers

We know our job is full of doom and gloom, trauma and drama. Inside the department and with our citizens. Let's face it, people don't call us because they are having a great day and want to share good news with us. We deal with phone call after phone call of pain, anger, fear, confusion. Radio traffic full of responding to calls for service, traffic stops, and keeping track of our boys and girls in cars helping citizens on the streets.

So I ask you, how do you relieve the stress of your job?

Have a co-worker who runs (or walks very quickly) the stairs of a major university football stadium. Another rides for miles and miles on bikes. One spends hours looking through the world of a camera lens and photographing gorgeous scenery.

Had a co-worker who knitted during her shift (knew how irritating the caller was by how fast her needles were flying) and did woodwork at home. Was always remodeling and reworking something for her home; her haven.

Then there are those co-workers (present and past) who are rude to officers, ruder to callers, and down right rude and snippy to co-workers. Guess that's how they relieve their stress - give it to others.

I do needlework, like crocheting, needlepoint, cross stitch, embroidery, by the hour. Also love to do home repairs (even have my own power tools) and paint rooms. I also am very active in my community through volunteer work. Believe if you're not part of the solution you are part of the problem.

Let's face it world, we all have stress. But as dispatchers we have it much much more than the average person. Yes, I know, physical movement, like exercise, it a healthier way to relieve the stress. But yuck, I want something to show for my time. Something I can point at and say I created that, I painted that, I fixed that.

Here is a great article about different forms of stress relievers:
http://stress.about.com/od/tensiontamers/a/stressrelievers.htm

As I said earlier, had a question for you dear reader. How do you relieve the stress of your job? What helps you sleep? What keeps you sane (well, keeps you off the edge)?

I'm Not Worthy?

Have been a dispatcher for a looong time. And it is a fact that we are second-class citizens in a police department. Officers think they can do our job better , the brass treat us like glorified secretaries (well, most of the time they treat their secretaries better), and our own supervisors forget how front line we are.

Yes, we are front line. Just because people don't see our faces, we are considered unworthy of the positive attention and support and respect of our own administration and the public we serve.

It is a truly horrific part of our job. I have lived through a few calls/events that have really left me shaken and upset, but because I wasn't directly on the scene I was not part of the debriefing or even permitted the opportunity to take the rest of the shift off to decompress, while the uniformed counterpart was given a week off with pay and/or given support to "deal" with the trauma of the call.

I have been briefly talking about PTSD. It is a new topic I am exploring. And I just went off on a tangent about the lack of tie in between PTSD and dispatchers. But I am allll fired up again.

I took Tired Dispatcher to Facebook to look for more PTSD information and to join dispatcher support pages, etc. Amongst my searching I found a Police Officers and PTSD support page. I sent in my request to join. Got reply asking if I was a police officer. Said no, just long time dispatcher who is dealing with work related PTSD. Got reply that the support page is for law enforcement officers only.

ONLY???? Excuse me???? Am I not part of the law enforcement community??? Am I not privey to the traumas and dramas of the commuity I serve? Do I not hear the stories and the crying and the shots fired? Do I not send officers to be shot at, monitor when in pursuit, send backup, an ambulance, a coroner when needed?

And because I sit behind a microphone or telephone I am not worthy of the same respect, support or help than my uniformed counterpart.

More PTSD Information

Have been Bing'ing "PTSD + Dispatch(er)" and can find no articles written about PTSD and dispatching. But if you search "PTSD + Law Enforcement" you can find a plethora of articles. Naturally I skimmed through them to look for anything related to dispatchers.

NOTHING

But I did like this quote from a published article written by Paul G Brown from The Criminal Justice Institute, School of Law Enforcement Supervision, November 2003, entitled, "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in Law Enforcement."

I quote, "We have all no doubt heard of police burnout. Usually police officers experience burnout after about eight to ten years of experience. After many years of seeing things on a daily basis that would make most people cringe, police officers begin to feel numb and feel that they have "seen it all". Nothing seems to affect them anymore. Their work and their attitude toward police work may suffer. Morale goes down and sometimes police officers relieve their stress by becoming increasingly violent toward citizens, suspects, and even their own families."

I submit the section could read like this, catered towards dispatchers:: "We have all no doubt heard of job burnout. Usually public safety dispatchers experience burnout after about five to seven years of experience. After many years of listening and hearing horrific things on a daily basis, for hours on end, that would bring the average person to tears, dispatchers begin to feel great levels of frustration, disassociation and think they have heard it all. After thousands of these calls they are less able to empathize with the callers, and thus unable to connect to be able to help to their fullest ability. Their work and their attitude toward police work and their co-workers begin to suffer. Morale goes down, Supervisors demand more, and too many times the dispatchers relieve their stress by becoming increasingly rude and belligerent toward citizens, callers, co-workers and even their own families."

Am not really saying anything new. Have discussed these very merits in previous blogs. But it is interesting that just the changing of job title and job description, the law enforcement officer PTSD (a diagnosis recognized) aligns perfectly to describe law enforcement dispatcher PTSD, something not recognized.

Am thinking of changing my major from Business/Marketing to Psychology. Think more research is needed in this area. And it is clear that so far no one is taking the issue seriously. Guess not enough dispatchers are committing suicide or physically hurting their family members over the stresses of their job to get the attention of someone who cares.

Also, in my humble opinion, dispatchers get so conditioned to being treated like a second class citizens in their job, they begin to discount their own personal feelings, ignore the physical stress symptoms, and don't share their experiences enough so others out there can be educated as to the level of stress and horror we are exposed to regularly.

Time for us dispatchers to speak up and be heard. Because I know I'm not the only one out there experiencing the symptoms of PTSD and having them over looked and ignored because my job title is dispatcher, not officer.

According to Anxiety Care webpage notes on PTSD: On the subject of hiding rather than overcoming, it has been suggested that children and adolescents , or adults who have trauma going back into early childhood, might use coping techniques like denying, or forcing themselves to ignore, the stress-generating event in PTSD. This might have been the only technique available to the child at the time, particularly if the parent/carer was abusive or indifferent so responsible for some, or all, of the trauma. The problem is, this is not a good way to deal with PTSD, as part of recovery has to be confronting the emotions and fears it generates and dealing with them, as mentioned. This might be extremely difficult if the adult or adolescent has learnt these "hiding" techniques very strongly as a child, and allows no possibility of error to enter his or her mind , as is common with young children and as may be carried into adulthood. The result will be summarily negative if the adolescent or adult cannot accept the "camels back": the building of stress over a long period, and seeks only to counter the current trauma without consideration for the depth of the problem that may be making current difficulties worse.

Okay, whoa. Have been told in the past by counselors this is what I do. I intellectualize the event or the words; I don't feel them. I don't allow myself to feel them and really don't acknowledge them. This was before I got back into police dispatching full time. When I was trying to cope with some of my childhood traumas and learn how not to repeat the mistakes so as not to mess up my marriage.

I think all of us dispatchers do this. Whether it was a trait we had in our personality arsenal before we started the job, it is certainly a coping mechanism that is developed, and fine tuned over the years. As a dispatcher you have to. Because people call you when they are frightened or hurt or angry or confused. And when it is call after call after call, you have to come up with a way to deal with them.

There is very little routine in our job. Maybe a call from an alarm company, always handled the same on our end, different outcomes in the field. But otherwise, every phone call is a different event needing a different part of your personality to handle. Every CFS for the radio dispatcher means a different or additional responsibility to handle. And when you have between three to 55 officers (or more) on your channel you are responsible for, and need to keep track of, and try to help, every CFS adds to the stress level, whether low or high priority.

But there is one big event, one big CFS, or one phone call asking for help, that tumbles down that carefully built house of cards. And no matter how hard you try to get the first level, that all important foundation, rebuilt, one end continues to fall, can't or won't support the next level. It is accepting the fact you might need help it not easy for most dispatchers. Admitting that you can't handle it without some support.

Is it fear that keeps us from finishing that foundation level? Is it not wanting to admit how much it scared you or hurt you that makes your hand shake when that all important corner is being placed?

9-1-1 Calls

One frustrating, waste of time, events we regularly handle as emergency 9-1-1 dispatchers are dealing with those 9-1-1 calls that aren’t emergencies. You know what I’m talking about. Those 9-1-1 callers who say oops misdial or those people who give their little kids their cells phones so the kids can push buttons and tone to deaf the dispatcher answering the phone.

I love those callers that when you call them back to confirm everything is okay after a 9-1-1 hang up or abandoned call and they argue with you and want to know why you’re bothering them and calling them for no reason. Do they honestly believe I am that bored that I dial numbers randomly just to accuse them of falsely calling 9-1-1?

How many of you have had this call?

Me: Hello. Hello. (over an open 9-1-1 call)

Caller: Hello? Is there someone on this phone?

Me: Hello. This is ________ Police Department. We received a 9-1-1 call from this cell phone. Is everything okay?

Caller: Oh my. Yes. Everything is okay. I put my cell phone in my purse/bag/briefcase/backpack (choose one) and it must have accidentally dialed out. I could hear voices yelling “hello”. Was that you?

Me: Yes sir/madam (choose one again). I am trying to confirm if there is a problem.

Caller: Well, clearly it was an accident. I just said I heard voices coming from my purse/bag/briefcase/backpack (do you really need to choose again?) and was answering.

Me: Yes sir/madam (never mind). I understand about the voices you hear from no where. (Okay, it is my dream to say that.)