By Jason J. Zigmont

"Our number of responders per call is down again this year … We need to increase our mandatory training requirements …" 

As 2006 came to a close, were those comments common to you? Were they usually followed by "OSHA says, NFPA says, or the government says?"  To me, these comments are equivalent to the desk sign that reads: "The firings will continue until morale improves!"

NFPA 1720 sets the consensus standard for response levels for volunteer departments (which is different than NFPA 1710 for career departments, but that is a separate issue). This standard requires minimum staffing levels that, when combined with the two-in, two-out rule, hazmat requirements, and local and state regulations, adds up to a minimum response level that is always two more firefighters then we have. With that in mind, we ask for our volunteers to respond to more calls, or try to find more volunteers overall.

Then we have OSHA, NIMS, Hazwoper, and NFPA training requirements. Even if you are in a non OSHA state, there are usually similar rules in place. We need to show yearly or bi-yearly competence in SCBA, Hazmat, NIMS, ICS, Blood Borne Pathogens, CPR, and EMS etc, ad nauseum.

Don't forget fit testing, department physicals, drivers' recertification and licensure and any specialized programs your department might have, such as confined space rescue, technical rescue, search and rescue … the list goes on forever. All of this training requires more of our members' precious time, and this is only the bare minimum if we want to be volunteer professionals.

So, how do we ask our members to go to more calls AND more training? Do we kick members out if they don't make the requirements? 

How about ignore the regulations that we do not like? Should we make a sacrifice on either the level of response or training? No way! 

You will never catch me saying that volunteers should be held to less of a standard. What we should do is look at what is really required of us, and what we require of our members, and find creative ways to meet these needs.

Determine needs
In my article about innate needs, we looked at the motivations of volunteers and how to keep them coming through, so I am now going to focus on how to meet the training requirements without alienating our members.

The first step is to determine exactly what training is needed and what the requirements are. It is too easy to say "OSHA says" without knowing exactly what OSHA does say. 

The other question is what other standards must your department and its members meet for NFPA, ISO, your local community and state regulations?

When you do this analysis, you are most likely to find that you have "required" drills that are not really required, some that should be required, and some that are impossible to meet. For example, some departments still do biannual AED training. While AHA recommends that you practice your AED skills regularly, they recertify every two years. With the simplification of AEDs, is it really necessary to train every six months on them or can you integrate them into other training?

The second step is to determine exactly how the standards must be met. This is where most departments get hung up on technicalities and they can save a huge amount of time. Most of the training requirements are competency requirements. While there are a few exceptions that have strict hours (HAZMAT comes to mind), the remainder require a member to show competence.  

Many departments have translated competency into "seat hours" or the number of hours someone physically spends on the training, but that is not the point of the standard and is a disservice to all involved.

Competency means that your member has shown a certain level of skill and knowledge based upon a standardized, job related, competency measurement. 

The best way to stay competent in your skills is to use them. Skills degradation has become a hot topic in the EMS arena and it is flowing over to the fire side. 

Competency levels
As the number of working fires decreases, our use of our skills decreases proportionately and so does our competence. Does this mean that every member needs two hours of blood borne pathogens every year to remember how to put on their gloves? No way!

How can you determine that any member is competent, even after two hours of training? Where does the two hour figure come from? Is there testing of both skills and knowledge? If so, if they can pass the exam before the two hours, do they still have to sit through the class? What if they are not competent after the two hours? 

The solution is to get rid of  "mandatory hours" and implement mandatory competencies. If I have been able to put on a SCBA safely and operate in a hazardous condition at the last 10 fires and I can describe the unit's use, parts and function, then most likely I am competent. I say most likely because we still need to have documentation of the level of competence as evaluated by a subject matter expert in both written and practical forms. 

The challenge is to create a tool that can be used to evaluate competency to be used by someone who is competent to evaluate others. This tool should be used no matter what type of training is completed or the length of the training. 

Each department does not need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to determining competencies. The NFPA has developed competencies for multiple levels of firefighters, their training, and their instruction. It is always easier to refer back to a consensus standard for determining competency than creating your own. 

If your instructor is certified as a fire service instructor, whoever certified them has agreed they have a certain level of competency as an instructor, and therefore have the skills to evaluate your firefighters. 

Your instructor can then utilize existing measures of competency to determine if your members have met their "required" annual competencies.

By utilizing competency-based training, you meet your requirements while truly gauging your members and giving a value to their experience. 

This means that your members that are actively using their skills and keeping them sharp do not need to spend hours sitting in a classroom. 

If we can encourage your members to deliberately practice (Ericsson & Charness, 1997) their skills and reflect on their performance during response situations then everyone wins! Members respond to more calls because they can spend less time training, your manpower goes up, and the standards are still met or exceeded. 

References:
Ericsson, K. A., & Charness, N. (1997). Cognitive and developmental factors in expert performance. In P. J. Feltovich, K. M. Ford, & R. R. Hoffman (Eds.), Expertise in context: Human and machine. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.