Dear New Emergency Dispatcher

“What do you wish you knew when you started in 911?”

It’s a question every Emergency Dispatcher asks themselves from time to time, and it’s a question Stacey Cann, ENP, CMCP, Director of 9-1-1 Communications for Winnipeg Fire Paramedic Service (Manitoba, Canada), posed to colleagues at her agency a few years ago. Her aim? To shore up their support system for incoming Emergency Dispatchers.

Cann has been in this profession for 27 years—including 25 with police and the last two years with fire/EMS—and is passionate about letting new employees know that when they become part of the communication center, they’re becoming part of an organization that wants them to thrive. She doesn’t want to wait until new Emergency Dispatchers start taking calls to let them know what support is available to them.

When she stepped into her role as Director of 9-1-1 Communications two years ago, Cann saw some struggles on the training side and began brainstorming ways she and the center could give support to trainees as soon as possible. She met with a group of leaders within the center and asked them what they wished someone had told them on their first day.

“They all wrote different stories and gave different advice,” Cann recalled. “It’s what people need to hear.”

From the letters received, one from Mike Grosvenor, Senior Communications Operator, really stood out to Cann. Grosvenor warmly welcomes the new recruits to the floor, then imparts five nuggets of wisdom from his 11 years in the profession. These pearls include leaning on your co-workers and protecting your peace off the clock while reminding the reader that “you matter more than you know.”

Grosvenor’s letter ends with, “Take a deep breath. Trust your training, trust your team, and take it one call at a time.”

The letters are given to new Emergency Dispatchers while training in the classroom before being assigned to a platoon, and they retain copies that they can reread as needed.

On days when things are particularly difficult, the Emergency Dispatchers know that the talk about community and support from Cann and Grosvenor aren’t just words—they can reach out to receive validation and support from anyone in the center, including Cann.

“I was speaking to someone the other day after taking a difficult call that really affected them,” Cann recalled. “They said, ‘Maybe I’m not cut out for this.’ I said that maybe that’s true, but of course the call you took was affecting you—it would affect anybody! It doesn’t mean you’re not cut out for this job.”

Cann can see where her inspiration to focus on community and team building in the comm. center comes from. She looks back on her career and sees times when she had amazing and not-so-amazing support systems and learned from them both to create a center where Emergency Dispatchers are seen as whole people in an environment where everyone has an impact on everyone else.

The letters aren’t just for the trainees, Cann said. The exercise gives the people who wrote the letters the opportunity to reflect on the things they love about this job and the things they wish they’d known. It also creates a bond between trainees and veterans, proving that everyone can learn from each other.

“It’s a tough job,” Cann said. “Not everybody understands this world of ours.”

She recalled a line from another letter written for the trainees from Lead Communications Operator CoraLee Selley who wrote, “Everyone in this profession tells you that you’ll become jaded and broken. But no one tells you that it’s okay not to.”

You can check out Cann’s post and Grosvenor’s full letter on LinkedIn.