Why do we hate dispatch?

[brentoli]

Why does everyone have an issue with dispatch? As one person put it in the chat today "they are overpaid morons."

Has anyone worked dispatch? Do you ever go in and understand how it operates?

I am not trying to defend incompetence, thats impossible, but I am trying to defend the profession as a whole.

Understand my job for a moment. I work for a multi-agency dispatch center.We dispatch approximately 10 diffrent fire departments, and 15 police departments. We staff 3-4 per shift. We have 4 frequencies we must monitor with an additonal 4 that can be used. 4 incoming 911 lines, and 3 non emergency lines. We keep all criminal records for the county, and are the back up dispatch for the 3 cities in the county.

Take the instance of a vehicle accident with injury. Fire dispatch starts the ambulance and station. Police dispatch starts PD units. Depending on the location of the accident, we could recieve 30+ 911's refrence it. We have mutliple units with radio traffic on 2 frequencies. Most ambulances are BLS and we must contact a private carrier for ALS. We have to make phone calls to contact a heliocopter, power company, wreckers, and any other resources needed on scene. Can you do all of that from your ambulance and still maintain paitent care?

Think about this next time dispatch takes more then 5 seconds to answer you. Maybe there isn't a huge wreck going on, but still, theres alot more that happens in the small dark room than you hear on the radio.

[kyle308]

i hat them becuase when i asked to be put down as a rider they should put it on the write freakin day, NOT yesterday...i dont enjoy showing up on scene and watching a different rider jump out the ambo. That brent is why i hate dispatch

[medic895]

I dont hate dispatchers I hate the ones that are incompetant and do not care I have worked with some very capable dispatchers and have seen some that are not so good . I have noticed the places that I have encountered poor dispatchers usually they have poor training and little oversite so theu are not always to blaim sometimes it is the agencies fault

[Dustdevil]

Brent, your post pretty well lays out the biggest problem most people have with dispatchers. They are trying to do too many things at once. Between us, the cops, and the firemonkeys, EMS always come last on their list of priorities, as we do in "public safety" in general (which, of course, is why we need to get the hell out of public safety [although the rest of public safety doesn't really consider us a part of them anyhow], but I digress). When you are a "jack of all trades" you are never going to be any good at any one of them, and everybody is going to be disappointed. Being a "public safety" dispatcher is a recipe for failure. Even if you are trained as an EMT, it doesn't really help, because your priorities are still demanded elsewhere. And, of course, EMT certification without experience and education to back it up is worthless. Sometimes it's worse than worthless. It's dangerous to know just enough to get into trouble.

Then there are those places where the dispatchers are paramedics who ONLY dispatch EMS, and don't have to split their attention between us and the cops and firemonkeys. It's a little better situation, for sure. But then those guys usually end up copping attitudes because they think their patch makes them as good as the rest of us, and their chair in the air-conditioned office makes them better than the rest of us. Again, this is very definitely going to lead to disharmony.

Of course, no matter what kind of system you have, there will always be resentment due to the simple nature of the job. Think about it. Just about every time you call a unit in the field, you are interrupting something. It might be sleep. It might be lunch. It might be a movie. It might just be a good conversation with a partner. Sometimes, it's even interrupting patient care! But it's almost always something. Yes, that is your job, and we know it. But it still begins to piss us off over time. And night dispatchers have it worse than the others, because of this.

And yes, I have been a dispatcher. Quite a bit, in fact. Everybody hated me too. That's why I have given so much thought to figuring out why.

[katbemeEMT-B]

I don't think that everyone hates ALL dispatchers. I do think that there are plenty of incompetent ones though. I work for two different services with two separate dispatch systems. I will agree with Dust when he says a system that concentrates on EMS only is somewhat better than a general dispatch system. The general system in my area has a lower standard for new hires. They have a few great dispatcher and then we have MR and MRS RICKY RETREAD. If they had to dispatch a true emergency....OH SHIT! The system that concentrates soly on EMS requires all dispatchers to be EMT-B certified at a minimum, they must have two years experience on an ambulance. I don't know if it is required, but I do know that we get along really well with everyone of them. When we call in for shift change, they take that extra minute to acknowledge us as people and let us know they appreciate what we do (this also goes both ways). We carry great respect for these dispatchers. This is not to say they are perfect, but they're pretty close.

[Yummymedic05]

Remember they saying "Don't kill the messenger"? Well we do! Like Dust said, you guys are interupting something...whether i'm sitting doing absolutly nothing and enjoying it, or actually executing a task I get huffy at times when dispatched anywhere.

[fireflymedic]

My boyfriend was a dispatcher before he was in PD and frequently told me where to go and how to get there LOL. I only got frustrated when we were seriously over ran with calls and they didn't realize we were all out and kept dispatching us toning multiple times, or when they would automatically double tone just to get out attention. I hated that. Short of that though, I realize they had a lot to monitor and it was difficult even with our smaller call volume (which has increased since we recently absorbed extrication responsibility from a volunteer squad). God bless the dispatchers as I know they get equally frustrated when we keep yelling at them to answer us. We are dispatched by state police post which covers not only the troopers, but all fire and ems for our district (4 counties) and provides us as ALS back up to two nearby BLS counties. I try to cut 'em slack, but I get so frustrated still as do they.

[emtannie]

I think Brent made a number of very valid points. One of the best is that a number of people in EMS don't know what the dispatchers actually do, how busy their job really is, and how difficult it can be to get the right information out of a caller who is a) hysterical altered level of consciousness due to the substance of the day or c) both..

I have worked dispatch as well, and one of the things I always pushed for, and was unsuccessful, was more cross-training..... I wanted the dispatchers to get at least 1 or 2 shift ride-alongs with the medics so that they could see what happens in the field, and I wanted the medics to do 1 or 2 night shifts just watching the dispatchers and listening in on calls, so that they would have a better understanding of what each does.... management thought that would take too much time away from actual work.... *sigh*

I also agree with Dust (I know - this is a rarity) that dispatchers are given too many tasks to do at once, and EMS always seems to be the last priority.

We also forget - everyone can make a mistake.... and although it seems like dispatch makes more than their share, we should consider a few things before burning them at the stake... we don't know how busy they are at the moment that they made that error.. it is possible that the information they gave you was wrong, because the information the caller provided them was wrong.. it is easy to blame dispatch for lots of things without looking at the whole picture.

[EmergencyMedicalTigger]

Don't dispatch me to the mall entrance #17-you know, the one where riser 58 is located-I'm not the freakin' fire dept! Tell me what store it's next to.

Don't give me a random suite number on the freeway or major highway that runs through the city and then get huffy when I ask you for a business name. Then I have to wait two mintues for you to find out that information, b/c you didn't think of asking in the first place. What a surprise, I ask you this question every time you do this, so maybe you should've learned by now.

And...please, please, please for God's sake, give me some clue as to what I'm walking in to. Don't tell me this person called 911 and you can't tell me anything about what is going on or what the medical problem might be. If the caller won't tell you anything, that's one thing. But tell me if there's screaming in the background, if the caller is saying something like "my leg has fallen off," "I'm going to kill you," or "no, put down the ax!"

[spenac]

Biggest thing is dispatch needs to stay out of the treatment field. Get the info and get it right, then send us. I prefer my primary service where dispatch transfers callers to us, then we can get the info needed. I don't hate dispatchers, actually have a few that are my friends.