Stress and the Emergency Dispatcher Role
by Ray Lotty

As an emergency services telephonist, you answer the `000' emergency line with Police Emergency, how can I help you? The caller, in between sobs, advises you of an accident outside her home. Two vehicles have collided head- on. There are persons still inside the vehicles, and the informant can hear a young child screaming. You calm the caller, obtain the exact location, and advise the despatcher for that area.

As an emergency despatcher, you respond police, fire brigade and ambulance. The first police officer on scene confirms there are five persons trapped, including two small children. An electricity pole has been damaged and electricity wires are hanging down. Traffic is chaotic. You send two highway patrol vehicles to assist with traffic control, and contact the Electricity Commission.

The local police supervising sergeant arrives on the scene, and reports that one of the drivers is deceased. You call the Police Crash Investigation Unit, and the Forensic Services Group.

After just over two and a half hours, the police vehicles call back from the scene. It's all over... or is it?

If you are the emergency telephonist who took the call on `000', you have attempted to calm the caller, obtain as much information as possible, and pass on the information to the Police Radio Despatcher as quickly as possible. You have then moved on to answer the next call.

If you are the despatcher, you have responded police and other emergency resources, co-ordinated traffic diversions, liased with fire, ambulance and electricity services, accounted for all police personnel as they have called back, updated your computer screen and log book, kept your supervisers updated on the situation, while coordinating all of the other jobs that are active at that time.

In this particular role there is no closure, as you are not aware of the final outcomes of the job. You also have the cumulative effect of moving from one job to the next without any respite between. You paint a picture of the scene in your mind, and whether or not the picture painted is accurate, for you it is real. Aspects of this job spark memories of events in your own life. You remember the day the young child next door was hit by a car, just down the road from you. You remember the time when lightening struck a tree on the corner of your street when you were a young teenager, and the sound of loud explosions, followed by a strange hissing sound through the electricity wires outside your house.

All of this is quickly put onto the `back burner' as you now have a job to do. Unfortunately, it is all left there!

Two days later, a Critical Incident Stress Debriefing is arranged for all police service personnel involved in the incident. As is usually the case, no-one considers involving the telephonist or despatcher. You now feel isolated, perhaps angry, or simply pass the whole thing off as unimportant, and conveniently store the memory in your sub-conscious, filed away until another incident brings it all out again.

Some people fall into the trap of feeling that just because they weren't actually at the scene, they're immune to the effects of critical incident stress, or it's cumulative impact.

If you are an emergency service telephonist or radio despatcher, whether paid or voluntary, you are entitled to the same support as those on the scene. Most of the time, those who have the responsibility for arranging support, whether by way of defusing or debriefing, or even one-on-one peer support, are not aware of your needs. Make them aware!

The job you do is of vital importance to your organisation. Your ongoing physical and emotional health is also of vital importance. Don't leave anything on the back-burner for long ... It will only boil over!

Ray Lotty is a despatcher with the NSW Police Service. Ray has been involved with peer support and CISM training for many years.