Vol. Squad Training

[emtwacker710]

For all of you members of volunteer EMS agencies what do you do for training? Here we have drill nights the 3rd Wednesday of every month and we get about 6 people out of our 44 members that show up. I am currently trying to get some ideas to make our trainings better and get a better turnout..can anyone here give me some ideas I can share with my Asst. Captain/training officer?

 

[BossyCow]

We do EMS on the first and third week of each month and fire on the second and fourth.

We do a lot of hands on drills and playing with the toys. If the classes are boring, the attendance will drop. Outside instructors are good too to shake things up a bit. I trade with instructors in neighboring districts to keep costs low.

We also have a minimum 50% attendance at drills in order to maintain active membership. If you don't attend drills, you can't go on calls until you do some remediation. How are the slackers meeting their CME for recert?

 

[emtwacker710]

our local hospital has 2-3 CME trainings per month and most people go to those, but our squad "requires" at least 50% of monthly drills and now all the board does is give them a slap on the wrist..they really need to start cracking down

 

[silvercat354726]

I am part of a very small squad and we had a bit of a down hill in responding to calls, we are finally starting to get back in the act. We have started going to another squad that invited us over for drills. We have so much on our plates and we cannot do drills on our own.

 

[hitechredneckemt]

One of the members on my vollie squad is a paramedic the teaches for the local technical college and we contracted through the school for monthly con-ed.Works out great having one instructor to cover all levels and she is one of us. Kinda taking care of our own.

 

[mikie]

To keep the members active, you're required to attend a certain % of training a year (every Sunday @ 1000-1200 and Wednesday @ 1900-2100). If you are missed frequently (unless their are other circumstances) they would probably not let you roll out as often. Missing too many, obviously, would result in a suspension or even firing.

Though it bugs me because a lot of older members skip, they only responding for fires or bad MVA's (most not being even a first responder (it's a FD as well). But their not even that old on the dept, 5+ years- and that's being MODEST. They have seniority of course, but no official rank (ie engineer, captain, chief).

Oh well. I'm just glad that I get my EMS CEU's through it

 

[LucidResq]

My volunteer SAR team has a minimum of 2 required trainings a month... one isn't always a training, it's the monthly meeting, but we almost always have some sort of training after we talk about business. The other is a monthly field training. There may be other required activities/trainings each month, and all missions are required. A person without 80% attendance to required activities may be dropped from the team at the discretion of the officer staff with approval from the board of directors. A probationary member (first 6 months and once they pass the test) can be dropped instantly by the officer staff for any level of inactivity, among other reasons.

To get attendance up you absolutely have to make them interesting and enforce strict rules about minimum attendance. People who take our 4-month long emergency care training are allowed to do everything an EMT-B can except using NPAs/OPAs and become "advanced first responders", an in-house certification. Without 50% attendance to the monthly CE trainings, that certification will be dropped and the person will no longer be allowed to perform any medical care besides some assisting, CPR and AED. Period.

Our trainings always have an interactive portion. We try to vary who teaches the lecture portions to spice things up. It's also a good idea to try to arrange joint trainings with other agencies. Not only do joint trainings expand how large the training can be, but it will help you build relationships in your area. It also helps your members get used to working with different agencies that have different ways of getting things done.

 

[CFRBryan347768]

Make It mandatory

but with 3 reasonable misses, our company has it mandatory, you better be dying or your screamed at, it went from 25% attendance to almost 100% so your no longer the nice guy but it works.

 

[AZFF/EMT]

we have the same problem with pour vollies. we don't have many left and the dept doesnt keep thm in line. It's a big problem. With our size now and being all ALS units we no onger need them to respond POV or one man in an engine or brush truc to med calls. When they do they have serious issues. Some are MFR's some are emt's who cannot use a monitor or tae a blood sugar. We have scheduled training for them to come in and wor with us hands on and classroom weely, and maybe 1 or 2 show up. We have put in new standards lie you cannot respond 1 man on an engine, you must be in uniform and you need to be at least an emt-b. But our dept has not held them too it. They show up and do nothing just to get the $10 per call. Times have changed in our dept. We would lie them to come to woring fires with a taner or utility, that would be awesome, but the role is not defined. We are woing on that, but to no avail so far. Why does a chest pain with an ALS engine and ALS rescue n scene need a brush truck and 1 man engine showing up 10 minutes late to satnd and watch wearing wranglers? Sorry for the rant it's a sensitive issue for me.

 

[Jango]

Set up really good training.....don't tell a soul, and then 15 min before training have your chief call dispatch and have them drop tones for a huge structure fire, that should bring out people you haven't seen in YEARS. Once they are there have them sign in for training.....conduct class. On a more serious note...have an ambulance and crew come over to the fire house and help with your training night. It will establish a good rapport with the crews and help your volley crew understand what the truck crew is needs from them on a scene.

 

[paramedix]

We asked our volunteer guys/gals to submit some topics of discussion or interesting calls/rescues they have attended.

Judging by the response we, call in a professional from the hospital or whatever it might be to give a sort of interactive lecture. With this the volunteers feel that it was their idea for the topic and not some chief sitting in the office that made the decision.

One of our last discussion nights included crime scene prevention. Some of the volunteers asked how to preserve a crime scene and we got a specialist from the police in. He brought everything with him to give the guys a hands on training session in crime preserving.

Got very good feedback.

 

[wolfwyndd]

I never understood this one, personally. The squad has FREE CEU training and members don't want to come. To be a EMT (B, I, or P) you have to keep up your CEU's, but people don't want to show up to the ones that are free. Gets me every time.

Seriously. I have very little in the way of suggestions for ya. On the Fire side of the house, we put everyones name in a hat and at every training and / or business meeting we pull their name out of the hat. If you're name is pulled, you get a brand new dollar coin.

On the EMS side, we get nothing other then CEU's for our training. Which, for me, is a d@mned good reason to go. And it's not just our own training captain either. We bring in someone from the outside every other training session from one of the local hospitals EMS outreach programs or some other health professional that gives us CEU's.

 

[firecoins]

For all of you members of volunteer EMS agencies what do you do for training? Here we have drill nights the 3rd Wednesday of every month and we get about 6 people out of our 44 members that show up. I am currently trying to get some ideas to make our trainings better and get a better turnout..can anyone here give me some ideas I can share with my Asst. Captain/training officer?

why don't you ask the membership? Find out what days are best for the majority, what interests them? Maybe there are certain things they are interested in learning. I don't attend my vollie corp meeting because I am in medic class. Medic class is more important.

Possibly have a party or something afterwards. A few beers afterwards never hurts as long as no one has too much I suppose. Just an idea.

CEUs are not a good reason within themselves becasue those in our area have so many available. Some are available online at my convienance, why give up a night? Furthermore there are mini conferences in our area so often. Its easy to get many done in one weekend. Need something more than that.

 

[BossyCow]

I'm seeing a repeating theme in those responses where attendance is low.. the agency doesn't enforce it. We get pretty good attendance at ours and those who don't keep up are put on probation until they attend other classes at other districts to make up for what they have lost.

For those of you who don't have good attendance at drills.. how is your response on calls? Personally, I don't want to be on a call where the event was covered in a class I missed.

Our SAR unit trains twice a month, we have classroom training one drill and FTX on the second where we take the classroom stuff and use it. We also have occasional Saturday drills and twice a year a weekend exercise.

 

[wolfwyndd]

CEUs are not a good reason within themselves because those in our area have so many available.

Well, there are a lot of EMS conferences in the area, but most of them cost a pretty penny. They generally run about 20 - 30.00 per credit hour AND most of them seem to be during the week when most of our volunteers can't attend due to their full time M - F 9-5 jobs, me included. The squad will pay for 'outside' training classes, but only if we have attended 90 percent of the 'inside' classes.

BossyCow: We tried to make our trainings mandatory and if you didn't attend a certain percentage, you were off the Squad. Unfortunately, we kinda shot ourselves in the foot with that because most of the members just went, 'oh well, we'll go somewhere else.' At that point we could barely get a squad out the door. <_<

 

[KEVD18]

objectively look at your meetings/training sessions. are they worthwhile? do you get anything out of them or are they just a formality?

you'll never get me to do anything just cause theres credits in it. i average 5x the number of hours i need every recert. ceus mean nothing to me as a whole.

if you want people to attend optional events(and dont kid yourself, if theres no punishment for abscence, its optional) you have to make it worth the time. the best suggestion so far is poll the group and ask them whats wrong with the current system. you'll never get anywhere asking them to build a better system, but by finding out whats wrong with the current one, you'll get the info you need to make it better.

i was once involved in a volunteer agency that had the same problem. our monthly meeting consisted of the chief reading the riot act to the membership about stupid bs. the deputy cheif mumbling his way through repeating the chiefs speech. the rest of the officer corp(with a few exceptions) toeing the company line and the general membership trying feebly to defend themselves or make a correction. nothing was ever accomplished. we did all the real business at the individual department meetings. it became pointless to attend the general meetings. towards the end of my time there, it was the brass and 2 or 3 members. imagine an hour of

chief: 2+2=5. please make a note of this.

deputy: id just like to reiterate, 2+2=5, and this should be noted

medical officer: as was just said, the product of 2 and 2 is 5, which is noteworthy.

member: sir, im pretty sure 2+2=4(followed by 30min of arguing over the actual product of 2 and 2 ending in the member being suspended).

while an exageration, the above is almost a transcription of one of our meetings

 

[BossyCow]

FEMA has a class on training for the rural fire departments. Very good information in the class. How to keep students involved, the training appropriate to skill level etc. I'm not sure if its available online, but would be worth checking out.

 

[emtwacker710]

why don't you ask the membership? Find out what days are best for the majority, what interests them? Maybe there are certain things they are interested in learning. I don't attend my vollie corp meeting because I am in medic class. Medic class is more important.

Possibly have a party or something afterwards. A few beers afterwards never hurts as long as no one has too much I suppose. Just an idea.

CEUs are not a good reason within themselves becasue those in our area have so many available. Some are available online at my convienance, why give up a night? Furthermore there are mini conferences in our area so often. Its easy to get many done in one weekend. Need something more than that.

that would be nice but the same people that show up to monthly meetings are the same people that show up for drills...plus a bit more but the turnout is basically the same...and the board doesn't do anything...