First first responder

摘要

The response of the Fire and Rescue Service to a situation starts when a call is received by a calltaker in the Dispatch Centre. Until the responders arrive on the scene, the calltaker is the only person who can direct the actions taken to stabilise the scene and protect life. They are in effect the first, first responder. If mistakes are made at this early stage they will affect the rest of the actions that follow, leading to incorrect responses, providing incomplete or incorrect advice to the public and impacting on the safely of responders.The demands that calltakers face are not always fully appreciated. They are required to do their job in a very short time frame, while dealing with the challenge of processing four tasks simultaneously: 1) Calltakers must actively listen to what the caller is saying;. 2) They must think about which questions to ask and instructions to give, based on the caller's responses. Both tasks are made harder when dealing with infrequent events or if the calltaker is inexperienced; 3) They must make decisions about the correct response; 4) Lastly, the calltaker must accurately record all of the information so that it can be shared with responders, dispatchers and other agencies. This is not an easy task if the questions and responses are to be entered as manual keystrokes. These competing demands increase the chance of error or omission.