Safety climate and firefighting: Focus group results |
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| Institution: | 1. Workplace Health Group, College of Public Health, University of Georgia, United States;2. Department of Applied Health Science, School of Public Health, Indiana University, United States;3. Department of Health Promotion and Physical Education, Kennesaw State University, United States;1. Cambridge Resources International, United States;2. Department of Economics, Queen''s University, Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6, Canada;3. Eastern Mediterranean University, Mersin 10, Turkey;1. University of Minnesota Duluth, Duluth, MN, USA;2. University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA;1. Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Department of Health Policy and Management, Education and Research Center for Occupational Safety and Health, Baltimore, MD, USA;2. University of Virginia, Center for Applied Biomechanics, Charlottesville, VA 22911, USA;3. University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health, Tucson, AZ, USA;4. WellAmerica Inc., Tucson, AZ 85712, USA;5. Tucson Fire Department, Tucson, AZ, USA |
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| Abstract: | BackgroundFirefighting is a hazardous occupation and there have been numerous calls for fundamental changes in how fire service organizations approach safety and balance safety with other operational priorities. These calls, however, have yielded little systematic research.MethodsAs part of a larger project to develop and test a model of safety climate for the fire service, focus groups were used to identify potentially important dimensions of safety climate pertinent to firefighting.ResultsAnalyses revealed nine overarching themes. Competency/professionalism, physical/psychological readiness, and that positive traits sometimes produce negative consequences were themes at the individual level; cohesion and supervisor leadership/support at the workgroup level; and politics/bureaucracy, resources, leadership, and hiring/promotion at the organizational level. A multi-level perspective seems appropriate for examining safety climate in firefighting.ConclusionsSafety climate in firefighting appears to be multi-dimensional and some dimensions prominent in the general safety climate literature also seem relevant to firefighting. These results also suggest that the fire service may be undergoing transitions encompassing mission, personnel, and its fundamental approach to safety and risk.Practical applicationsThese results help point the way to the development of safety climate measures specific to firefighting and to interventions for improving safety performance. |
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