Impatient Dispatchers

[ffemt8978]

I just got back from a call for a 5yoM C/C "Nosebleed that wouldn't stop". We get there, and as we're getting out of the ambulance, we're told that the nosebleed has now stopped. We went in, spoke with the family, assessed the kid and got a refusal signed.

The part that I want to discuss with the group is how we were paged out. We received 3 pages over a 5 minute period, and each time the dispatcher sounded more exasperated that we hadn't responded yet. Most of us don't take radios home, and almost all of us live over 5 minutes away from the station. We are supposed to be paged out every 5 minutes until somebody responds on the radio that we've received the page.

I would just like to know how you deal with impatient dispatchers, if you have them.

[Chimpie]

Basically the dispatcher broke protocol. Unless the type of run needed to be toned out more than once in a five minute period because of the severity (ex: plane crash vs nose bleed) the dispatcher should have only dropped the tones once every five minutes.

Chimp

[rescuecpt]

I agree, the dispatcher broke protocol. The Chief or an officer should talk to them about why they paged that way, and review the protocols with them.

[rescuecpt]

Our County is shooting for all responses to be ON SCENE in under 9 minutes (which, by the way, is impossible in many areas around here). Right now it's protocol, but there's a pain-in-the-butt politician trying to make it LAW. Am I going to be jailed for not responding fast enough? I'm a volunteer for goodness sake - and I'm not allowed to break the law to get to the station any faster!

So our *new and improved* protocol is that until a RIG is on the road (1st responders don't count), they have to page out every 3 minutes for BLS and every 2 minutes for ALS AND we have to call in to say we're on our way to the station.

It's annoying as hell.

At the FD, it takes me under 2 minutes to wake up, get dressed, pee, and get to the firehouse. I can do all that in under 2 minutes, but not if I have to stop to make a phone call!

[SafetyPro2]

We generally only run into that situation with an engine. Used to be that as soon as a Captain was on the way to the station, he'd call in on his personal radio (officers are the only ones who have them) and say the engine was responding. We never saw that as a problem because the dispatch and on-scene times are what get officially reported, not the responding time, but during our recent policy review, the consultants determined that was an issue and the Chief decided that we would no longer put the engine as responding until it actually rolled out the doors. This means that we now do get 2nd and 3rd calls for status...isn't a seperate set of tones, just a "Engine 41, please respond".

[Chimpie]

We generally only run into that situation with an engine. Used to be that as soon as a Captain was on the way to the station, he'd call in on his personal radio and say the engine was responding.

OMG

the consultants determined that was an issue and the Chief decided that we would no longer put the engine as responding until it actually rolled out the doors.

Good idea, since that could dramatically cut down the "response time".

Also, what would happen if the Captain got into an accident on the way to the station?

[Chimpie]

Originally posted by rescuelt@Jul 20 2004, 12:22 PM
Our County is shooting for all responses to be ON SCENE in under 9 minutes

Unless you have personnel living/sleeping at the station I would think 9 minutes is going to be hard to come by.

Chimp

[ffemt8978]

Originally posted by Chimpie+Jul 20 2004, 03:12 PM--></div><table border='0' align='center' width='95%' cellpadding='3' cellspacing='1'><tr><td>QUOTE (Chimpie @ Jul 20 2004, 03:12 PM)</td></tr><tr><td id='QUOTE'> <!--QuoteBegin-rescuelt@Jul 20 2004, 12:22 PM
Our County is shooting for all responses to be ON SCENE in under 9 minutes

Unless you have personnel living/sleeping at the station I would think 9 minutes is going to be hard to come by.

Chimp [/b][/quote]
Correction:

Unless you have people sleeping in emergency vehicles every few blocks, 9 minutes is going to be hard to come by.

[Chimpie]

ROFL

[SafetyPro2]

Originally posted by Chimpie@Jul 20 2004, 03:08 PM
Good idea, since that could dramatically cut down the "response time".

Also, what would happen if the Captain got into an accident on the way to the station?

Not really. Our response time is the time from dispatch to the time the unit arrives on-scene. The time that the unit says they're responding doesn't really factor into the equation. The time it takes from leaving the station to arriving on-scene isn't a number that's recorded or used for any reason anyway. For example:

Scenario 1

13:04 - E41 is dispatched for a car fire
13:06 - Duty Captain reports E41 is responding while driving to station
13:09 - E41 rolls out of the station
13:12 - E41 arrives on-scene

Response time is 8 minutes

Scenario 2

13:04 - E41 is dispatched for a car fire
13:09 - E41 rolls out of the station and reports responding
13:12 - E41 arrives on-scene

Response time is still 8 minutes. Only difference is when dispatch is notified.

If the Captain were to get into an accident after calling in the response, it wouldn't really matter as the engine would roll with whomever else arrived at the station and saw the engine still there, and everyone would wonder where the other Captain was.

Anyway, moot point since we're not doing that anymore anyway.