Volunteer firefighters put mental health on the line

As deputy fire chief and Emergency Medical Responder in Martensville, Dean Brooman has seen a lot in his 28 years of service.

His volunteer firefighters work and train hard to provide a strong standard of care as first responders and college paramedic personnel.

When paramedics need to be called, they know that Martensville firefighters are treating the patient to the best of their abilities before they even get there.

With only eight career firehouses in Saskatchewan, the rest of the departments are volunteer-based with only a few paid full-time staff.

Louis Cherpin, president of the Saskatchewan Volunteer Firefighters Association, said there are around 400 fire departments with roughly 7,000 volunteers across Saskatchewan. SVFFA represents over 50 per cent of them.

According to the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs, there were nearly 100,000 volunteer firefighters across the country in 2021, a sharp decrease from 126,000 in 2016.

Last summer, Manitoba’s rural volunteer firefighters raised concerns over a newly implemented training policy that tripled the hours of training needed to become a medical first responder.

New recruits will have to commit to 312 hours of training from the College of Paramedics. This does not factor in the commute time from remote rural areas, which is required to attend the training over several months.

The cost of training a new person is about $15,000, and there is always a risk that they will quit after just one traumatic accident.

Putting mental health on the line

Rural first responders are the first ones on a scene often just minutes from their homes.

After 30 years as a paramedic, Darcy McKay, the provincial director of STARS in Saskatchewan, still remembers his first call to his hometown in rural Saskatchewan.

The tears running down his face were not because of the call itself or the people involved but because he was proud to be serving his home community. 

But that level of care and service for communities across the province costs emergency staff time away from family and takes a toll on their mental, emotional, and physical health. That cost has been noted, especially in the last decade, and support for their well-being has greatly improved, said McKay.

Brian Schafer spent 20 years in emergency services before moving to emergency management with the Saskatchewan Public Safety Agency. He responded to emergencies in rural Alberta as a volunteer first responder and eventually as a firefighter and regional fire chief; he knows that feeling when the tone goes off.

“There’s a good chance there was always somebody that you knew, but honestly, your adrenaline kicks in, you do what you’re trained to do.”

Major events, like motor vehicle collisions, rarely go unnoticed in small communities like Wakaw, and when people want to know the intimate details of what happened on Hwy 2 on a Friday night, this can make it difficult to interact within your community or even seek help, said Steven Skoworodkov, who owns Wakaw and District Emergency Services.

“They want to know what’s going on with another community member but we can’t really say because of PIPEDA (Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act)…even debriefs sometimes get difficult.”

So who can emergency workers talk to when things get rough?

In Martensville, Brooman looks for signs that his staff may need more support as they work through “bad calls.”

“There are many resources available to them that they can get a hold of and lean on. And then, of course, there’s always just even talking amongst ourselves, sitting down having a cup of coffee and debriefing.”

With each person having decades of experience, people like Skoworodkov, Brooman, Schafer, and McKay have seen how attitudes towards mental health support have changed, especially over the last five years, said Skoworodkov.

Based on 30 years of research into the International Critical Incident Stress Foundation model, the Saskatchewan Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) Network was created as peer-to-peer support for public safety personnel and healthcare workers. It is made up of firefighters, paramedics, and mental health professionals, said Holly Schmidt, CISM instructor and team member.

Within 48 hours after an incident, a CISM team goes out and debriefs the members involved and offers their support.

“We provide them with tools for coping and explain what’s going to happen to them in the next little while, and then if they’re still struggling after that, we have resources that we can give out to them that they can utilize for further care.”

Through word of mouth and building awareness for their program, Schmidt has seen CISM grow as more departments ask for support and get involved in the program. Younger members are more accepting of it, she said, but she is also seeing older members get on board.

“They have seen how it’s affected them,” said Schmidt, “and don’t want their new firefighters being affected too.”