Dispatcher Stress: The Underdog Issue in Public Safety

I'm hovering in the neighborhood of 2-3 years as a dispatcher; the benchmark at which most sources I've read indicate a high turnover rate. According to this article, the national average here in the United States for dispatcher turnover was about 17% from July 2005 to July 2006. The stakes are high in this field. Precision, attention to detail, quick and decisive action are among the many desirable qualities required of a person charged with answering emergency phone calls and sending police, fire, and EMS personnel to critical incidents. Even when the incidents aren't critical or life-threatening, those same qualities (and others) are still highly emphasized.

However, Google "dispatcher stress" and not much useful information seems to come up. Much of the information I've run across written specifically from the perspective of the emergency dispatcher appeared to be of relatively low quality. Much of the information I've found is put together in a manner that can be likened to how a dispatcher hurridly scribbles her notes on a peice of paper while taking information from the frantic victim of a traffic accident.

Consider, as an example, Stress and the Dispatcher - Surviving the Console (pdf) by T. P. McAtamney. This online book is written by a former 12-year veteran to dispatching at a "medium-sized Public Safety Department." The content is good for its coverage of a topic seldom explored, but it also looks as though it was thrown together during one of the author's shift, re-typed with some added clip art from Microsoft Word to spice it up a bit. I had much the same reaction to Answering 911: Life in the Hot Seat by Caroline Burau. Both resources offered some interesting insight and confirmed much of my personal experience as a dispatcher, but both texts left much to be desired.

In any event, I don't mean to criticize either of the above mentioned authors for their work. Advancing the notion that dispatchers can suffer from sustained stress is very valuable and necessary to the field of public safety. Amidst the many other demands dispatchers (and their co-worker police officers, firefighters, and paramedics), our own stress management usually gets lost in the mix. Whatever work is being done on the matter, even if it's accompanied with tacky clipart, is better than nothing at all.

I'm still in the game and I still plan on being in it right now.