Owensboro-Daviess County Dispatch 911 Director Paul Nave will tell you that it takes a unique individual to work in emergency dispatch. Those who’ve chosen this line of work are not only highly trained professionals, but the job itself is specifically equipped for those who can handle stressful and high-pressure situations, all while keeping the person who has dialed 911 as calm as possible.
Because of the training required, the late hours often worked, the chronic exposure to dangerous and even deadly situations, Nave has been meeting with senators and representatives in Frankfort to show his support for House Bill 79. The bill is very important to Nave, and he believes it could create a higher retention rate and lower turnover rate for dispatchers in the local area.
“The crux behind the bill is, it’s a training incentive for telecommunicators professionally trained through the Department of Justice and certified by the KRS,” Nave said. “The days of a police officer filling in a slot are long gone. You have to be certified and trained for a specific skill set to do this job.”
The training incentive would provide those who work in emergency dispatch an extra $4,000 per year, which would be divided over the course of a year’s pay and distributed monthly.
Nave said state-level dispatch has been granted the training incentive, and the amount was included in the Kentucky State Police budget. Nave says Owensboro-Daviess County dispatch employees have yet to see the incentive granted at the local level.
Owensboro-Daviess County dispatch workers cover a wide range of situations that fall under both county and city jurisdiction, including city and county law enforcement and city and county fire. Nave said dispatch also notifies Yellow Ambulance for each and every situation that requires emergency transportation services.
The stressful situations members of dispatch face and, sometimes, take home with them are very hard to imagine, unless you’ve done the job yourself, Nave said. Not only that, but the process of finding the right people to fill those roles is extremely difficult, which is why retention rates are so important.
“When people call 911, they’re not calling because they’re having a good day–they’re calling because they have an issue,” Nave said. “We will have to interview three or four people to find one with the skill set and the ability to handle the stress. My job is to retain these workers. When we lose an employee, I don’t just lose the person. I lose all the training we put into that too.”
Nave said the job requires five weeks of academy training along with 16 weeks of in-house training. And even after that, it takes another year to become proficient in the job because there are so many unique and unfathomable circumstances a person faces along the way. Owensboro-Daviess County dispatch has a turnover rate of 14 percent, which falls into the 14 to 18 percent average across the state and nation.
Those in dispatch are usually the first people to receive calls regarding house fires (which, as Nave said, double within each minute), car accidents, having a weapon pointed at them, loved ones not breathing, witnessing heart attacks, among many other life-or-death situations. Dispatch must guide the caller through his or her next steps and keep them calm when a person is in panic mode.
“This is a true story, and it’s stuck with me throughout my entire career,” Nave said. “I received a call from a mother whose child wasn’t breathing. The child had fallen into a pool and drowned. The mother was begging me to help her bring her child back to life. These are the stressors dispatch deals with every day.”
While retention rates in dispatch aren’t as high as Nave would like to see them, he believes the passing of House Bill 79 could very likely improve those numbers. Nave said those who stick with the high-stress job for years on end often develop a passion for it.
“I’d say a majority — if you’re able to do the job and deal with the stress — it becomes a passion for them. Some people stay four or five years and move on. If someone stays six or seven years, I consider that a success,” Nave said. “The turnover rate is bad everywhere, all across the country. It costs taxpayers money, and it’s bad for the community because they aren’t always able to talk with a highly skilled individual who’s spent years doing this.”
As for the future, Nave has hope that Kentucky lawmakers will pass House Bill 79, but he also knows that state-level change doesn’t come with a snap of the fingers.
“In Frankfort, of course, you never know how things are going to go. You can’t predict politics. Working on a legislative committee for eight years is a daily grind,” Nave said. “You have to educate politicians. I’ll be elated if we get it passed in the first year, but I think it’s going to take more than one reading to get it passed.”
