Intra-Governmental Communication

The value of good Intra-Governmental communication

By Alan Perry

Most branches of your local government probably function very well as independent units such as Police, Fire, Public Health, Sheriff and EMS, but do they all work together effectively?  It has been my experience that development of close lateral communication systems and the management of programs to attain common goals are frequently lacking. This is only my own perception based on my own experiences, and might well be due to a failure to communicate and share these processes with all affected by them.

A recent example I will use to illustrate my concerns involves a class a police department was conducting for new officer candidates, for which a fire department was requested to provide medics in case of injury. The subject of excited delirium came up in the context of apprehending subjects, the dangers of that situation to both the officer and suspect where explained clearly enough, but there was an information gap when it came to what the EMS personnel’s expectations and capabilities were. After discussing the observation with the training officer I was able to present a brief explanation of the EMS protocol to the candidates, how we can help reduce the risk to officers and suspects with proper use of chemistry, and the exact procedure, limitations and expectations of the medics. This brief summary generated another 15 minutes of discussion of the subject. Unfortunately only the candidates and instructors present benefitted from that discourse, hopefully the instructors will carry that information with them for future classes.

Every city department and public safety organization has its own structure, policies, procedures and directives which guide the internal operations of that unit. If we all operated alone that would not present a problem but the reality is that we frequently come together to resolve public safety issues and more often than not, the more serious the event the more interaction and cooperation is required. I recall a school shooting MCI drill I was asked to observe and critique a few years ago which involved local police and fire departments, the community college and the state police. This should have been your typical MCI 101 exercise but it went sideways from the start with multiple command structures, duplicate communications systems and major terminology problems. There were fire company officers refusing to send their personnel in with police rescue teams because the scene was not “safe”.  I can’t help but think that better training integration from the start would have produced a better outcome. That was my recommendation; I produced a presentation for the public safety command staffs. To my knowledge that was never presented, and no subsequent training has occurred to address the problems.

From an even wider perspective consider the delivery of health care in general; EMS, Public Health and Hospitals all function in their own spheres. This is another area that can benefit from greater integration. For the most part the relationships are good here but we still run into the problems of expectation mismatches, poor communication and teamwork. Are we driven to improve based on revenue, legal liability or improved patient outcomes? I think we should really start looking at the coordinated care concept and find a way to apply it to EMS in that setting, but that’s a whole other discussion.

For now let’s focus on intra-governmental communication. It is a simple concept; those that commonly work together in the field or office should train and develop operational policies together so interoperability is seamless and requires little, if any, additional thought. OK, it’s probably not going to be that easy but I don’t think it would be that hard either. Personal influence and control will be the biggest obstacles. Public safety should be viewed as a single functional unit for the purpose of establishing training goals, policies and procedures. In my dream world I would like to see police, fire, EMS and hospital staff training together doing CPR, Hazmat awareness, MCI, HIIPA & Bloodborn pathogen classes together. In that type of environment important lateral relationships can be built with other public safety personnel before they show up on the same scene together. Take it a step further by conducting joint NIMS training, having joint policy development and review sessions by both command and field staff. Have an open training environment by sharing instruction resources and pulling subject matter experts from each other so everyone will always be on the same page. Have open communication channels at all levels which foster and encourage lateral information sharing. We all have one goal and amongst ourselves we possess all the tools we need to effectively and efficiently handle just about anything. It should no longer be so segmented and territorial, petty turf battles are for tyrants, dictators and children. Let’s grow up and move on.

Be Safe,