By Captain Ryan Pyle

The 16 Firefighter Life Safety Initiatives clearly identify the need for a change in the fire service culture. Initiative number one states:

Define and advocate the need for cultural change within the fire service relating to safety; incorporating leadership, management, supervision, accountability and personal responsibility.

There are other professions that have had success changing or more importantly, shaping, culture. While their missions may vary in scope, the models they use can easily be applied to the fire service and how we develop personnel to lead us into a safety-minded culture. I have had the good fortune to spend time with many individuals in the fire service from California to Virginia and I seem to hear a common theme all over: We are not doing an adequate job of teaching the future leaders to take over the reins. I feel that I, personally, could do a much better job. It appears that we are doing a good job of teaching them to tie knots, raise ladders, operate a hose line, etc., all of which are very important. However, what are we truly doing to prepare them to make a cultural change? Take a few minutes and look up "cultural change" on the Internet and see how many topics come up. This problem is definitely unique to the American Fire Service. I cannot think of any other profession that stands to lose as much as the fire service by not changing our culture. If major corporations make poor organizational decisions, they may lose money. If the fire service makes poor organizational decisions, it could result in serious injuries or worse. I know this may seem like a "the sky is falling" approach, but have we not tried everything else under the sun to change the culture with little or no success. What are you doing as a teacher or mentor to change the culture of the fire service?

Every medical doctor that is licensed in the United States must go through a period of "residency" where they are mentored and exposed to the needed experience to one day be a successful physician (www.ama-assn.org.org, accessed on March 1, 2009). According to the American Hospital Association, "a teaching hospital is an institution, which in addition to delivering medical care to patients, also provides clinical education and training to future and current doctors, nurses, and other health professionals" (www.aha.org, accessed on March 1, 2009). Additionally, the University of Maryland School of Medicine states "...rapidly orienting and training new residents is a constant challenge in teaching hospitals" (Ho. Et al 2005). Does this not sound vaguely familiar in the context of training new firefighters? From my interactions with firefighters around the country, it appears that virtually every department has the same challenges and it would be beneficial to implement a teaching model to establish training guidelines and set the tone for a safety-minded culture. If your department is not using this model, or something similar, perhaps you should consider it. The fire service virtually does, or should do the same thing as the teaching hospitals. We run alarms, provide training to our members and mentor future leaders, all while actually providing service to the community...right? There are many similarities that could be drawn between a resident physician and a probationary firefighter. For example, an aspiring physician must meet minimum qualifications for acceptance; similarly, an aspiring firefighter must successfully complete prerequisite education to meet minimum requirements for testing eligibility. The similarities don't end there, the aspiring physician gains acceptance into medical school, where the job specific education begins, while the aspiring firefighter gets hired in the capacity of a career or volunteer firefighter where they too, learn job specific training. The aspiring physician is then paired with resident physicians where they learn about how "to really do the job." The fire service does this as well, but it is at this point where the two occupations deviate. The medical field has a specific curriculum in which they are required to follow in order to grant the intern full residency. The fire service takes a slightly different approach: The learning is department and mentor dependant. My challenge to each of you is to teach a culture of safety as if you are retiring tomorrow. It is our responsibility to teach the probationary firefighter not only the X's and O's of firefighting, but also how to be safe and empower them to stop any unsafe act that they witness. This is a perfect time in the history of the fire service for the experienced to teach, and the inexperienced to learn.

In my experience, the fire service spends a lot of time teaching new firefighters the basic skills needed to perform our job efficiently. I am by no means suggesting that we stop these practices. They are a major part of how we get the job done and done safely. However, we cannot ignore the other pieces of the pie. Our best chance at changing the culture of the fire service is to teach the brand new firefighter how to always be safe and empower them to do so. The analogy that I like to use is to begin with the end in mind. In other words, the first day that your department hires a new firefighter, we should teach them risk/benefit analysis, reading buildings, reading smoke, and a how to adopt a safety minded culture. Where do you want this new firefighter to be in ten years in terms of how they approach safety? Remember, those are the people who will teach future generations. This will change the future and reduce injuries or death in the fire service. It has to start at day one, when they are most impressionable. It can either be a vicious circle or a successful circle. In other words, the teaching philosophy will forever shape the probationary firefighter. As a teacher, you must set a precedent of a safety-minded culture from day one. The student will in turn teach future firefighters that same safety-minded culture, thus reducing injuries or the loss of another brother or sister. Conversely, if the probationary firefighter is taught reckless, unsafe, "cowboy" firefighting, they will inevitability assume that the action of the teacher is standard operating procedure or worse, acceptable and we will not reduce LODDs. As previously mentioned, cultural change is a challenge for any organization. According to the text, The Cultures of Work Organizations, by Trice and Beyer, there are several considerations to successfully change the culture of your organization; they can easily be adapted to how the fire service operates;

• Capitalize on propitious moments: This is the perfect time to change the culture. The fire service is still losing firefighters; therefore there is definitely a need for change in terms of safety. Based on the information below, provided by the US Fire Administration, we are not drastically affecting change in the fire service (www. usfa.dhs.gov, Accessed on March 1, 2009)
  
  
• Combine caution with optimism: Change is hard for any organization, and the fire service is not exempt. However, we, as teachers, must encourage our personnel and let them know that change will benefit firefighters for years to come.
• Understand resistance to culture change: This is huge for the fire service, change is always tough, but as mentors, we must take drastic measures to drive home the importance of a cultural change in the interest of safety.
• Change many elements, but maintain some continuity: Of all of the bullet points, this by far is the most important. It is important to let firefighters know that we are not changing our mission, rather, how we carry the mission out.
• Find and cultivate innovative leadership: The change in culture does not have start with formal leaders (Captains, Chiefs, etc.), but rather from informal leaders. I could make a strong argument that this is where the greatest amount of success will come from. When an officer tells a firefighter to do something, they have to. However, when an influential peer suggests a change, it is much more effective. If we can get the senior firefighters to buy the change, our odds of success increase significantly. Lean on your informal leaders (Beyer, 1993).

While the previous bullet points were not created specifically for the fire service, they certainly are applicable.

Today is the day for your organization to become a "teaching" institution. Each of us has been taught by various leaders, both good and bad and there are valuable lessons to be learned from each group. Regardless of your learning or teaching background, I urge each of you to take the opportunity to teach a new firefighter a safety-based culture so that Everyone Goes Home^®.

American Hospital Association. 1 Jan. 2006. Accessed on March 1, 2009. www.aha.org
American Medical Association. 6 July, 2008. Accessed on March 1, 2009. www.ama-assn.org
Beyer, Janice M., and Trice, Harrison M.. The Cultures of Work Organizations. New Jersey: Prentice Hall Publishers Inc, 1993.
Ho, Danny Yan Xiao, F. Jacob Seagull, Amy Sisley, Richard Dutton, and Colin F. Mackenzie. Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society, January 2005. University of Maryland School of Medicine, 2005.
U.S. Fire Administration.9 March, 2009. Accessed on March 1, 2009. www.usfa.dhs.gov

Ryan Pyle is a Fire Captain at Station 71 in Shawnee Kansas. Ryan has been a part of the department for thirteen years. He holds an Associate of Arts degree in Fire Administration, a Bachelors degree in Management and Human Relations, and a Masters degree from the Edwin Stene School of Public Administration at the University of Kansas. Ryan is a graduate of the 2007 Virginia Fire Officers Academy,which is a program that includes leadership values associated with the Everyone Goes Home® Life Safety Initiatives Program. Ryan has been accepted into the Executive Fire Officer Program and will begin in September.