Something I Don't Understand

Actually, there are a lot of things I don't understand. But one thing in the fire service that I do not understand is why we don't work together in a way that utilizes technology and shares our knowledge for everyone's benefit?

When you join a fire department, you are issued your turnout gear, pager, and some equipment; gloves, flashlight, rope, the basics, and later you build up more and buy more to fit your needs. You get sent off to training at your local fire academy and start going through the various certification courses and get your piece of paper. Depending on the culture of your department, you might continue to consistently train in-house or you might not Depending on the type of calls your department responds to, some of those basic skills and knowledge bits might fade away just because it's not being used. Some departments are able to issue every firefighter a fundamentals/essentials textbook where other departments might only have one or two in station.

Those textbooks have A LOT of information in them as well. Hundreds of pages, some of which might not be applicable to each department.

Here's my question. As a collective effort, there is a lot of knowledge within a single department and even more if one departments works with a couple others.

Why are we not working together to make a type of condensed guide for firefighters? In the past, I have tried to take power points and/or practice tests and rewrite/restyle them into study guides, more or less because rewriting is how I learn personally (as in writing out practice test questions as a statement with the answer bolded or something).

My company is lucky enough to have a couple instructors as officers in our department. But I bet most departments have a mutual aid company with an instructor or two.  Although, this isn't something that necessarily requires instructors. If you're taking classes, you can type up your notes or type up parts of the power point for others to use.

And with cloud technology, it's simple to share. Dropbox is great for sharing files and so is Google drive. If you make a group, anyone in that group can upload files. So other, outside training resources could be shared as well.

I created guides for my FFI exam, and I am doing it for my BVR Tech exam. I have also already found resources to help me prepare for the FFII exam, which I hope to take in the spring.

Different people learn in different ways. Some people can see something done in front of them once and they're good to go. Others need to read about it first. I fall into the reading about it category.

I think it's little things like this-with technology, you can have the information at a single touch. I have my guides synced so that they can be accessed from my laptop, tablet, and cell phone. It is a cooperative effort, but I think most firefighters could benefit from it. What's wrong with a little refresher every now and then?

Stay safe.