Good leadership

As promised I wanted to take a couple of seconds and go back to last weekend’s medical work and address one last thing, leadership. Throughout a very hot and stressful weekend at the county fair the crew chief spent less time actually doing medical care and more time looking out for the volunteers and their health. He spent time talking to people about incidents especially bad ones that might shake up a new volunteer and he spent some time on the last day publicly thanking the overall group. This is what leadership is all about, as compared to a previous weekend.

This is going to sound like an ego trip but truly it is not. Yesterday I responded to a fairly bad medical on my campus for a person in a diaphoretic attack. We had another EMT and first responder take medical care while I took incident commander. Keep in mind this is half volunteer organization and half paid organization. I quickly dispatched people to hold vehicle traffic, escorts for Fire Department and ambulance and other assorted jobs. The problem with some volunteers is they are so excited to be in a call that they forget that all positions need to be filled. Sometime that position is in the middle of right field watching dandelions grow, but if that is where they need you, guess what? That is where you go. I had one responder that I asked to hang out by me to be escort, I turn around and they are gone. Inside to help with patient care, I am like Hello? Get back out here, they are good in there. But this helps me realize the challenges of being crew chief when you want to be a little stronger with someone who does something incorrectly, but you can’t be too strong as they are volunteers. In this case going against direct orders potentially puts someone else in jeopardy. However the difference between an effective leader and otherwise is to just adapt for it during the incident and not make a big deal. Make sure it does not put the patient or any of the responders in danger (i.e. cover traffic control), and talk about it afterwards in private. This is compared to a leader blowing up in front of a patient or other volunteers while care is being given to patient. Just some interesting observations.