Workloads of Emergency Call Types in Active-Duty Firefighters

Abstract

Firefighting is an occupation with high injury risks, particularly when conducting fireground operations. The fire service generally quantifies the job demands of firefighting through tracking emergency call volume across 24 h shifts; however, volume alone does not account for the specific work completed in response to different call types. Utilization of external (i.e., objective work) and internal (i.e., intrinsic responses to work) training load measures have the potential to quantify the multifaceted workload demands of responses to medical and fire emergencies and inform injury prevention strategies. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to utilize training load measures to quantify the workloads across emergency call types. For medical emergencies and fire emergencies, the external load and the physiological, perceived, and cumulative internal loads were quantified. The results indicate that the magnitude of objective work required for fire emergency responses that include fire suppression and/or auto-extrication is approximately three times greater than that of medical and other fire emergency (i.e., no suppression or extrication) responses. Further, in response to the objective work for fire suppression and/or auto-extrication calls, the intrinsic workloads are six times more physiologically and perceptually demanding than—as well as double, cumulatively—those of medical and other fire emergency responses.