Expert panel: Can too much training be bad?

Training teaches what operations does, and operations does what training teaches. That was the slogan for the Chesterfield County (Va.) Fire and EMS Department’s training and safety division. A big banner with that slogan hung on the wall of the main corridor that led to all of the fire classrooms at our public safety training center.

Training requirements are increasing in many jurisdictions and the time volunteers have to train and serve is simultaneously decreasing. That doesn’t make it any easier for leaders of volunteer-staffed or combination departments to meet their training needs. We asked several fire service leaders to weigh in on how to handle training issues.

Does it ever make sense to train less?
John Robart: I don’t believe this is the correct question at all. In my view, it never makes sense to train less. We must train smarter, make our drills more effective and have our firefighters well-trained for those situations they will face on a regular basis. Generally speaking, we endeavor to have all firefighters trained as Level 1. In our in-house training, it is important to keep skill levels up in the areas which we are likely to see.

William Jetter: No, the problem with training less is bad habits start to take over and lead to the injury and death of firefighters.

David Burke: This question can be misinterpreted on the first reading, but in some cases it does make sense to train less. Most agencies rely on established minimums with regard to training.

Specifically, you have to do a certain drill on a required interval to maintain your certification, qualification, and/or eligibility and the impression can be gleaned that it is based on a standard opposed to an individual need. In other words, you must complete a checkbox in order to remain active, despite the strengths and weaknesses of the individual person’s skills.

While some of these make sense for law-based requirements, e.g., donning an air pack or CPR recertification, others could be based on the individual rather than the skill. One of the worst demotivators for the troops is having them do training that they do not see value in.

Jeff Carman: What I have seen throughout my career, and especially during the recession, is that it is very difficult for fire departments to give up a level of service. Rather than say they can’t offer hazmat response or USAR services any longer, they would rather close stations and lay off personnel and/or continue to provide the service even with reduced levels of competency and personnel.

At some point, an organization must identify its core levels of service, its priorities, and when financial resources become scarce, they need to pull back to providing just those core services. Instead, what I see is that many agencies are continuing to offer these enhanced levels of service even though they can’t afford to train to appropriate levels of competency.

So to answer the question, yes it’s appropriate to train less in some circumstances — only when it still allows you to maintain a base level of competency in every service you provide. If your base level of competency falls below the line, then the department should drop that level of service. It’s never OK to provide a service you are not competent at providing.

Should limited-resource departments stop being all-hazard departments and only train on what they are most likely to face?
Robart: In our jurisdiction, we must register with the municipality on an annual basis and clearly identify the areas in which we have training and equipment and those areas which we don’t.

For example, my department has never provided water/ice rescue capabilities, high-angle rescue or hazmat response. We don’t train in these areas, other than an occasional awareness session. If we have a member with a particular interest in one of these areas, we support him or her while taking external courses. This will develop an awareness of this activity and generally increase the training level in the department.

We also need to recognize that in the volunteer service not everyone is going to be trained to operate in an interior attack. We try to look at the individual to train each person to do the jobs that they can do effectively and efficiently. We must provide all the training we can, and develop the skills of all our firefighters so they can work effectively as a team and deal with the situations they face.

Jetter: We need to address basic fundamental functions of the fire service. Regionalization becomes a key resource for special operations in which other departments in a region can support the local fire service on the all hazards front.

Burke: I believe this to be a very realistic question and use the old adage, “It is better to be good at one thing than OK at several” to help define my position. In the same way that a department should not participate in a specialty area if they cannot afford the equipment, they should also refrain from participation if they cannot afford to train their members effectively. The bottom line is the safety of the responders and the best overall outcome for the patients and victims.

I know of a small department that prides itself in an all-hazard delivery model. Because of their size and limited resources, they cannot meet the standards for equipment and training for all of their members. Often, their people are forced to improvise and make due. The problem is that this damages their credibility with mutual-aid departments and has caused tension on incidents. Recently, one of their firefighters was injured on an incident as a direct result of limited training.

Carman: Yes! The fire service is here to provide fire suppression. I get that fire numbers have dropped and we need to provide as many services as we can to be of additional value to our communities we serve. But all of the other services we provide are bonuses, services we can provide with additional funding we receive.

When that additional funding we are getting goes away, then we should begin to reduce those bonus services and pull back to those that we have identified as most beneficial to the community and that no one else provides. No one else provides fire suppression, so that is clearly a core service. Sixty percent plus of what we do is EMS related, so clearly that is most likely a core service for most of us. But even fire suppression and EMS have service levels within those disciplines that we can address.

Do we need to provide interior firefighting if the organization is a small department with limited staff? Do we need to have paramedics on every engine if the ambulance provides paramedics too, or can we provide advanced EMT service and stabilize the patient until the ambulance arrives?

Do we need to have a hazmat team when the jurisdiction only has a handful of hazmat incidents every year, or does it make more sense to develop a multi-jurisdictional hazmat team with our neighboring agencies and split the costs of maintaining a hazmat team?

We are not good at saying we cannot do everything. Firefighters spend their lives rising to every challenge they face, which is admirable. But it’s a quality that makes it difficult to reduce services when resources become scarce.

It becomes a double-edged sword, too. When fire organizations continue providing the same service levels they did when financial resources were more plentiful, the public doesn’t fully understand the impacts of reduced funding. I see tax measures and benefit assessments fail all the time and I truly believe it’s because the public doesn’t necessarily feel the impacts of reduced funding because the firefighters are doing everything they can to maintain service levels.

What the public doesn’t know is that in many cases our firefighters are trying to provide those same levels of service without the proper equipment, training, and staffing. Most of the time we pull it off, but too many times it results in tragedy.

Should limited-resource departments have the flexibility, similar to British Columbia’s playbook, to adopt SOGs and the appropriate level of training?
Robart: In our system where we register to provide certain services, I believe it is essential to have appropriate operational guidelines, supported by required training.

It is also important to identify firefighters who have differing levels of training so that when operating in mutual-aid environments, firefighters are not placed in a situation for which they are not trained. While I may know the capabilities and limitations of my firefighter, in a large event, the incident commander or sector officer may not. In our municipality, we use color-coded tags that identify a member’s level of training. This also provides accountability.

Jetter: While I support a playbook approach like that of British Columbia, I don’t get too hung up on the playbook concept. The concept is good, but the culture and pure dynamics of the European model has impertinent differences to that of the U.S.A. model.

When you factor in our country’s building construction, our rules of engagement, apparatus, NFPA standards, ICC (International Code Council) requirements, etc., they all present inheritance differences. Therefore, we should take lessons from our Canadian counterparts and include best practices, but be willing to hold personnel and fire chief — as well as local, state, and federal politicians — accountable for not accepting the risk factors.

Burke: If you consider the certification standards that are typically applied (awareness, operations, technician, etc.), we as an industry have already done that. There is nothing wrong with a department only providing awareness-level training (and equipment) if that is all that they can afford.

It is important that their communities, as well as their assisting agencies, are fully aware of their capabilities and limitations before the call. A great success model includes partnering with other agencies for specialty teams and this is a perfect example of its application. It is much easier to justify a proportional amount of resources (personnel, training, equipment, and/or funding) for an agency when shared with others.

Carman: I like the consistency in these documents, and I like the concept. Again, in my opinion, if an organization does not have the resources to provide adequate levels of training and be able to maintain and verify competency in key areas, then they should not provide that level of service.

For example, if your organization provides interior firefighting, but the organization cannot provide adequate training levels and/or maintain and verify competency of its personnel, then that organization must not provide interior firefighting services any longer.

I have watched this occur in many organizations during the Great Recession. It is most difficult for an organization to admit it cannot provide a service any longer. To do so feels like a huge defeat, so the organization tends to try and continue providing the service level even with reduced training, personnel, and competency levels.

They will even shortcut legal requirements to continue providing the service when what really needs to happen is for the organization to drop the level of service and/or look for ways to continue providing the service through innovation, consolidation, etc.