911 Wellness Foundation

Today Co-producer Richard Thacker (Eaton County Central Dispatch, MI and fellow board member–911 Wellness Foundation) and I enjoyed the privilege of introducing Michigan’s 911 professionals to 911ProTV at the 2012 Michigan NENA Conference in Lansing. 911ProTV is the only online “TV Network devoted to educating, entertaining, and inspiring North America’s emergency telecommunicators.” (Note: if you visit the site, please be patient: we’ve only just begun and will be greatly improving and enriching the site after this conference!)

The network creates what we call an Online Living Room where the 911 family can join together to enjoy watching brief video messages created by their peers and subject matter experts on a variety of topics promoting health and peak performance.  The public and all 911 stakeholders tuning into 911 ProTV can gain a rare opportunity to enter inside the dispatcher’s otherwise-invisible world to learn directly from them what it is like to live their extraordinary daily lives responding to our emergencies.

The response to 911ProTV was overwhelmingly positive today as 911 frontline dispatchers, supervisors, directors, and state and international NENA leaders (including current NENA President Rick Galway and state NENA President April Heinze) took their turns in our director’s chairs, cameras rolling…  Yet as I’m sure these leaders would affirm, one 911 director who declined a video interview emphasized: “the most important people to sit here, for us all to listen to, are the dispatchers who sit the consoles in our centers everyday. All the rest of us are here only to support them. They, and the public we serve, are what it’s all about..” (To hear more from this director, visit 911ProTV and look for “An Interview with the Invisible 911 Leader. These videos will be posted soon.)

911ProTV is a non-profit project of the 911 Wellness Foundation and today these professionals affirmed how valuable this unique venue will become to tell their own stories, speak to key work issues affecting their careers, and their personal lives–particularly the incredible stress 911 telecommunicators face every day at the console. So if you’re a 911 professional, we hope you will sit back with a glass of ice tea and your laptop, and log on to 911ProTV.com. And then pick up your smart phone (or other) video cam and help build it for all to enjoy. Share a bit of your mind and your heart with your 911 colleagues. Feel free to “ad-lib” or choose from any of the following questions to “prime the pump”:

• What is your funniest 911 moment?
• What is your most inspiring experience as a 911 Pro?
• What do you wish the public understood about 911?
• What support do you most need from leaders to excel at your 911 work?
• What encouragement would you offer to your 911 peers who may be struggling with the job?

Feel free to share on any topic you think will support the cause, and remember– funny is also really a good thing! (Just also remember, if your video is selected, many may be watching, so use your best judgment!) Together we will build 911ProTV as a resource that helps 911 Wellness Foundation achieve its mission to foster the health of our 911 dispatchers, and the success of our 911 centers in the Next Generation PSAP.

And to all the rest of you–the public and all 911 stakeholders, here’s your chance to thank, encourage or inspire our First first responders–those who may answer your next emergency call! We welcome your brief videos too. Just send them to rlthack@ymail.com. And, if you’re camera-shy but wish to support 911ProTV, you can still help. Just log on, enjoy, and leave your comments–and please post your response to this blog entry, too!

Thanks to all who have so quickly embraced 911ProTV. Peace and health to you!

Jim Marshall, Chairman–911 Wellness Foundation, Co-producer (911ProTV)

On April 19, Craig Whittington, ENP, 2009 President of the National Emergency Number Association (NENA) accepted an invitation to join the founding Board of Directors of 911 Wellness Foundation. Craig is currently Special Projects Director for Guilford Metro 911 (North Carolina). He has long shared a concern for the impact of stress on 911 professionals having seen the toll it has taken on friends and colleagues over the years. Craig stated “I have seen the effect…we have lost some of our best people–dispatchers who were sharp, committed, and passionate–then they became burned out. We can do something about this. I’m glad to join the board.”


In 2009 during his NENA presidency, Craig was instrumental in bringing the 911 stress issue to the forefront of the organization’s agenda by catalyzing the establishment of a Working Group addressing these stress risks.  In early 2012 the NENA Working Group on Acute, Traumatic and Chronic Stress submitted (for internal review) the nation’s first Standard on Comprehensive Stress Management for 911 Centers. The document sets the bar for a standard of care for 911 telecommunicators to protect them from the health impacts of work-related stress. It proposes that all North American Public Safety Answering Points (PSAPs)”shall have comprehensive stress management programs for their personnel.” 


Welcome, Craig! We thank you for the contributions you’ve already made to uphold the health of 911 telecommunicators and, in advance, for sharing your experience and passion to support the mission of the Foundation!

Jim Lanier, ENP and fellow Foundation Board member joined me in presenting at the 2012 Navigator Conference in Baltimore, Maryland yesterday. Our topic, Exploring the Risks of Next Generation 911 emphasized the many potential benefits of NG911 for the public while urging the 911 industry to explore the potential psychological effects it could have on our 911 telecommunicators. Response to the presentation has been strong and we will continue while here in Baltimore to foster increased awareness of our 911 professionals about these concerns. The foundation’s position is that we support NG911 and hope to foster its success by protecting dispatcher well-being as they interface with it.

Thank you for taking time to read this short post. Your comments will be welcomed!

Jim M.

Kim Matelski, Charlevoix-Cheboygan-Emmet Central Dispatch
Photography by Joni Hayes

The board members of 911 Wellness Foundation extend our profound gratitude to the nation’s emergency telecommunicators for their extraordinary service as our country’s First first responders.

Last year during this week celebrating dispatchers , I was asked to speak in South Carolina at the Charleston County Consolidated 911 Center. This year National Telecommunicator’s week brought me to the Saginaw County 911 Communications Authority. The city of Saginaw, Michigan was rated as the #1 most crime-ridden community in the nation from 2002 through 2010, per capita. Let’s just say that these 911 professionals have their work cut out for them! And they are up to the task.

As their leaders told me, if any group of emergency telecommunicators should be provided with training in management of traumatic stress, it is their people!  These 911 dispatchers field over 1,000 calls daily. And as you can imagine, they experience more calls involving shootings, stabbings, suicides, homicides, domestic violence and tragic death  within one month than occur in many communities within a year.

Public Safety Telecommunicators of Saginaw County 911 Communications Authority

As I sat in their 911 center watching them in action this Wednesday I was humbled and struck  with the fresh realization once again that the psychological demands of their work are phenomenal. Just the day before, within one 4 minute stretch, as my students joined me in the classroom to practice stress reduction techniques to buffer them from the impacts of such traumatic exposures, their coworkers received and managed two separate calls involving violent deaths.

The screaming of hysterical citizens and the labored breathing of officers in pursuit and at risk all flow into the headset of these telecommunicators who feel enormous responsibility to calm and assist all those involved. Can you imagine being the dispatcher sitting at that console?

More Dedicated Saginaw 911 Professionals. Note student in center still a bit stiff per need for more stress management training! (Actually, this carving honors the firefighters of Saginaw Fire Station #3, our training site.)

Yet, even as other 911 centers handle a less frequent flow of such emotion-packed violence under the headset, their telecommunicators answer “911″ never knowing when that next unforgettable call will come. And it will.

It is so natural that we as citizens take their 24/7 availability for granted. 911 Emergency response is a luxurious, always available resource we simply touch our phones to activate. But at what expense to the quality of their personal lives do these dispatchers serve us? This question is at the heart of The Foundation’s mission to foster the health of every 911 professional through research, education, policy, and treatment.

As National Public Safety Telecommunicators Week winds down, let us as citizens and fellow 911 stakeholders all vow to make it the beginning of a more conscious gratitude for our 911 professionals. For every call managed well much credit is due–to the frontline dispatcher who answers your call, to their floor supervisors who back them and carry the burden of assuring that you receive the best possible response in your worst moment of life, and to their 911 center leaders who are in constant movement managing personnel, scheduling, budgets and untangling government bureaucracy and the complex web of evolving technologies that enable 911 to serve us with such remarkable efficiency.

911 dispatchers perform tasks that most of us could not endure emotionally; they are an exceptional group of professionals with very uncommon sense and abilities who are extremely hard to replace. So, most of our 911 centers are running low on staff, which places even more stress on these professionals who must frequently work mandatory overtime–and that means less time to recoup and to be with family. They could well use a bit of our thanks and encouragement to keep on keeping on!

So, the 911 Wellness Foundation urges you to google your local city or county 911 to find the address of your 911 center and send their staff a note of appreciation. And when your note arrives after National Telecommunicators Week, all the better– because as you can imagine, these invisible first responders typically feel forgotten and unappreciated the other 51 weeks of the year.

I consider it an incomparable privilege to serve these 911 professionals as a trainer and as Chairman of the 911 Wellness Foundation.  Thank you, 911 family for your incredible caring service to our nation! And to all 911 stakeholders who join us in honoring them, thank you for caring. Please consider leaving a response to this post to support our cause!

Jim Marshall

 Yesterday, 911 Wellness Foundation board member, Michael Armitage represented the Foundation in a news story on PTSD among dispatchers that aired in Northern Michigan, and featured LEELANAU COUNTY 911‘s  Emergency. Management Director Tom Skowronski,. We commend Tom and Michael and thank you for contributing this important knowledge to increase public awareness of the risks facing our 911 dispatchers. You can watch this news story by clicking on the link below. We invite your comments!

http://www.upnorthlive.com/news/video.aspx?list=~%5Cnews%5Clists%5Clocal&id=740623

A Very Big Step for 911 Dispatchers and this cause… Today, the national media covered perhaps the biggest story for dispatchers ever– a research study co-authored by Dr. Michelle Lilly and Heather Pierce, M.S.– a member of the NENA Working Group on 911 Stress. These researchers’ findings produced evidence supporting  the risks our first first responders face for experiencing serious distress and PTSD at the console. Their study confirms and extends the findings of Roberta Troxell’s 2008 study and supports comments offered by Jim Marshall, 911 Wellness Foundation Chairman, to the FCC in the matter of NG911 (see elsewhere on this blog).

This is a very significant advance for the Foundation’s cause of substantiating these 911 risks and educating the public and all 911 stakeholders to support the mental health of our nation’s emergency telecommunicators. We congratulate these  researchers and express our gratitude for their investment of time and effort to help reveal a challenge facing one of our country’s most critically important yet underestimated public service professions. We invite you to read this ABC news article and return here to share you comments. As the Foundation moves forward we are heartened by this news and hope you will also be moved to join us in our work. (See tab “Our Mission” to learn more.) JM

A major emphasis in my training and presentations to 911 professionals is on how to buffer the risks of traumatic stress and compassion fatigue related to managing the “worst” calls (potential suicides/homicides). In preparing these telecommunicators to improve self care I consider it essential that they look ahead to changes that may increase their stress. So I inform them about Next Generation 911: what it is and how it may change their experience at the console. Most know very little about NG911.

But I am careful to NOT sensationalize and alarm them. I present the objective fact that they will be handling emergency calls from the public via texting and real time video. Yet, within a few minutes during such classroom discussions of NG911 the room tone changes. These 911 pros begin reflecting together on what it would be like to actually see the callers during the most violent and tragic calls, and a dread begins to seep in. Invariably – irrespective of the state, whether the PSAP is rural or city, whether dispatchers are new or veterans– many of these telecommunicators become visibly and deeply disturbed; they express very strong feelings of concern about the types of calls they will experience via real time video (see letter below).

They generally agree that NG911 technologies will likely boost emergency response capabilities leading to saving more lives and greater protection for our field responders. I help class participants work to build a list of such benefits in an effort to offset the potential threats NG911 poses to them personally. This is a precarious cost/benefit analysis though. There is a solid and deep concensus among these 911 telecommunicators: they fully expect to be more heavily exposed to traumatic experiences at the NG911 console. Most believe that NG911 will make their jobs far more  difficult emotionally and thus pose a greater risk to their health.

As you will note from my columns here on the blog and in my formal comments to the FCC, I am in full agreement with these concerns. As much as I wish dispatchers’ apprehensions were not merited, I know as a mental health clinician simply on the basis of current knowledge in traumatology that mental health risks will escalate with NG911. And that is the impetus for creating the 911 Wellness Foundation. Still I urge frontline dispatchers to avoid over-reacting, catastrophizing or poising as victims–all of which will invalidate their voices which we so desperately need to hear in shaping NG911.

Public Safety Telecommunicators are the Subject Matter Experts in Real-Time 911 Console Operations. I assure them that 911 stakeholders will listen as they share their concerns articulately, with respect, and with balance. This blog represents a forum in which such critical dialog can happen.

So, we are now featuring letters from dispatchers and all 911 stakeholders pertaining to concerns about the impact of NG911 on the person of the dispatcher. We pledge to publish these letters irrespective of the Foundation’s level of agreement with the writer’s paticular views. Your letters will be edited only for length, grammar, and appropriateness (excerpting offensive language if used) but never altering substance of message. The goal is to provide an open forum in which 911 stakholders join to explore and gain richer insight about this NG911 mental health issue.  911 leaders reading these comments will hopefully gain insight from frontliners’ and actively recruit them as full participants in the groups shaping national NG911 standards and the federal rules governing its implementation. Through such participation frontliners will be able to experience inclusion in policy making that affirms their voice and value in the greater 911 community.

The following message was offered by a veteran dispatcher from the midwest in response to a recent discussion during the course Survive and Thrive Together in the 911 Center. Name has been withheld by request. Readers with a personal history of violent trauma are cautioned as this writer does appropriately include some graphic details in her descriptions. This letter has been edited for length. Again I thank you for taking time to read this column. We welcome your responses! JM

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LETTER FROM A VETERAN 911 TELECOMMUNICATOR

… let’s consider the physical and psychological trauma we will be continuously opening ourselves up to with NextGen911. As it stands now, we are psychologically at the scene of every crime/medical/fire. While those who do not do our job may never understand this, a dispatcher is in fact the first one to arrive on scene. We are the first one to assess the situation. We are the ones who essentially make or break how this call is going to be handled. We have built shields within us to protect ourselves from immediate trauma. We push our anxiety, our fear, our grief to the side in order to handle the call.

If we now become witnesses to crimes (a gunman decides he is going to kill his children, and calls 911 via video chat so we are aware of the situation, and trains the video on the kids as he pulls the trigger…) we have changed our perception of the call, and the caller. Having the children laying dead with their brain exposed, or just laying there with blood pouring out of them will invariably cause an uncontrollable response that would not have occurred had we not had a visual.

I understand that technology will come. I understand texting will come. I understand that photos will be sent. But video regardless of 2 way or 1 way, should never be allowed. It is NOT an awesome tool. It is NOT a helpful tool. It will be debilitating. It will make us witnesses to calls. Real time, first hand witnesses. We will bear those moments for the rest of our lives. Horrendous car accidents, industrial accidents, suicides, homicides, children drowned, children beaten… We bear internal, emotional scars as calltakers/radio operators. I cannot begin to imagine what we will do to ourselves if we are forced to become firsthand witnesses instead of first first responders. We are supposed to help. That is what our position is designed for. We are not supposed to be held captive by a caller with ill intent. While I understand it will not be the INTENTION of most callers, it WILL occur.

Using my own personal tragedies on the job as I spoke of earlier, I had a week stretch in my 7th year where I lost 9 people. 3 of them were to a house fire, and 2 of them were children…I spent years trying to scrub away the images I burned in my own head, I can’t imagine I would have ever come back if I had to bear witness in real time.

They do not take care of dispatchers as we exist now. If we are invited to debriefings it is just that; a debriefing of the call. We do not get Critical Incident Stress Management…How in the world are they going to take care of us through visually witnessing trauma?  …How are they going to take care of us when we become paralyzed with fear when a gunman kills his kids and says you’re going to watch your officers kill me? The bottom line is, how much are they going to continue to put on our shoulders to deal with, without helping us deal with it? 

…we are just humans who have a range of emotions that will be barraged with real time images of death, destruction, sadness, horror and heartbreak? These are the things I fear, and I am one of the stronger ones. Imagine what it will do to someone who is brand new.  …Imagine what it will do to someone who has had a traumatic experience in their life who will now be forced to witness that same, or similar, incident occur to someone else. We are after all, human.