Free Research Paper About Fire And Emergency Services Safety And Survival

The modern world is characterized by cases of traumatic events such as wars between nations, fires both in the forest and urban areas, natural occurrences such as earthquakes and floods. Emergency personnel such as firefighters are usually tasked with the duty of quickly responding to these events to salvage what they can from the situation and save lives and property. However, these professionals deal with many complications in their lives as they are exposed to life-threatening situations. At most, they deal with saddening events and, therefore, are prone to suffer from psychological and emotional stress having been exposed to such traumatic events.
There is need to offer both counseling and psychological support services to emergency services personnel and their families in order to assist them cope with the stresses and emotional aspects brought about by the exposure to these traumatic and life-threatening circumstances. Occupational stress results in a decline in employee performance and thereby affects the overall organizational performance and productivity. That can especially be disastrous where the emergency personnel cannot effectively perform their duties because of suffering from occupational stress.
There are various resources available to emergency services personnel that would assist them in living stress-free lives even in their line of work. These include Employee Assistance Programs. These assist employees attain work-life balance and satisfaction. Health Assistance programs assist in developing solutions to the challenges faced by employees such as firefighters so that they can best serve in their duty stations (Gros et al., 2011). The aim of these programs is to develop and implement the best approaches and practices of ensuring emergency personnel and their families have easy access to effective assistance especially in dealing with occupational stress.

References

Gros, D. F., Strachan, M., Ruggiero, K. J., Knapp, R. G., Frueh, B. C., Egede, L. E& Acierno, R. (2011). Innovative service delivery for secondary prevention of PTSD in at-risk OIF/OEF service men and women. Contemporary Clinical Trials, 32(1), 122-128.