Maintaining first-responder numbers a challenge for rural communities

Rural first responders face a difficult task trying to cover large portions of the province with little staff, growing recruitment challenges, and in some places, growing populations.

It’s not all doom and gloom, though. Some fire and paramedic services have found opportunity and success amid challenges and pressure on emergency response systems.

Why it matters: First responder services find it difficult to keep up with growing populations and the movement of people in and out of rural communities.

Dave McEachren, captain and training officer with the Southwest Middlesex Fire Department, says turnover has been one of his volunteer service’s most significant challenges. As his department wraps up a recruiting drive for several open positions, he says both retirements and the movement of people in and out of the community have contributed to the problem.

“There are people buying and selling real estate, moving, changing jobs – also more people working from home, which takes them to new areas. It’s a good thing as it brings people to small rural Ontario, but does create turnover,” says McEachren.

“It takes time, energy and resources to train new people. Having them move on in short time is a challenge.”

The investment required for each volunteer firefighter has also become greater and will remain so indefinitely, because the province now requires volunteer firefighters to be certified under National Fire Protection Association standards, the same standards used for training full-time firefighters.

McEachren, who has been part of the Southwest Middlesex Fire Department for 23 years, says they have always trained under the standard, but have not been required to complete official certification up front.

“It means you need to train and pass testing. That’s something we used to be able to do and spread over time, but now its concentrated at the beginning of someone’s career,” he says.

“It’s not a bad thing in that it helps performance earlier in someone’s career. But that being said, it has increased the challenge of recruitment.

“It’s about five months of evenings and weekends, so a big commitment for people with families. But people can be pretty committed to the department. That’s been a good thing. If they’re willing to commit that amount of time, it’s a pretty likely they will stay.”

McEachren says the demographic pool from which they draw volunteer firefighters is evolving. There are fewer farmers, a stronger male-female mix, and more diverse cultural backgrounds. A wider array of professions is particularly positive, as it brings knowledge that the department can employ in different circumstances.

“We’re seeing a lot of folks working for large corporations but living and working in small communities. And that’s great because they bring different backgrounds. There’s so many professions in rural fire departments, which benefit the department.

“Farmers know farm fires, mechanics know car fires … It gives us a well-rounded group of people to draw on their different skills. Also, the fact we have folks that are fluent in various languages. This is important.

Language barrier is definitely something we will come to see as challenges moving forward,” says McEachren.

“As we see, the current situation we have a lot of small communities expanding housing. That’s a sign that will help us … but we also need the extra people to staff the department as well.”

Community health

In the health sector, programs offering cash incentives and the waving of student loans have attracted health-care professionals to rural and remote Ontario communities. Tracy Hussey, a veteran Dundas-area registered dietitian and recruiter working in the health sector, says there are five jobs for every person in nursing.

People left large metropolitan areas during the pandemic, which, on paper, should help fill staffing gaps. But that movement also pushed up housing prices. This is an additional problem for those living in those communities and anyone looking to relocate for a job in health care, since financial incentives do not go as far.

Even so, there are benefits to doing so.

“There are so many benefits the government has put out. They’re not well advertised. For example, if a nurse goes to rural community, they get a $25,000 bonus for being there for two years.

“In lots of communities the government will pay back tuition for nurse practitioners. It’s essentially free tuition just to be there for two years, or about $35,000,” says Hussey.

The fundamental issue, regardless of geographical location, is lack of family doctors or nurse practitioners. Without access to such professionals, Hussey says emergency services including emergency rooms and paramedics find themselves under ever greater pressure.

Simultaneously, she believes “we are not being creative” when it comes to managing the personnel available.

It’s not uncommon, for example, for paramedics to be on disability due to the intense physical and psychological nature of their job. When all hands were needed during the pandemic, Hussey says paramedics on disability were allowed back to work in roles that did not impact their ailment.

This was a change from pre-pandemic days, when being on disability meant the individual was not allowed to work at all.

Since the crises of 2020-22, however, this older practice has again become the norm. Hussey says she thinks this is unnecessary and adds artificial pressure to a “broken” system.

Creative thinking has had an impact in some areas. In Chatham-Kent, a county of approximately 105,000 people, where over half of residents live outside the main urban centre of Chatham proper, integration and partnerships between different arms of the health sector have reduced the burden on emergency services, including first responders.

Peter Morassutti, a paramedic, manager of mobile integrated health and deputy chief of operations for Medavie EMS in Chatham-Kent, says the service with which he works has benefitted greatly from a variety of cross-discipline programs. Among them is Community Paramedicine, an initiative in which paramedics provide coordinated care at home to individuals at high risk of hospital readmission.

“Last year we had an 84 per cent reduction in 911 calls by our community paramedics attending and assisting patients in their home. That led to a 51 per cent reduction for those patients in transport to the ER,” says Morassutti.

The program has also helped in recruiting and keeping paramedic staff, because the initiative offers a way to diversify and specialize a professional portfolio. His service is also trying to recruit new staff from Canada and abroad.

“Staffing levels for us, it’s one of those things that continues to be a challenge. For us, with that partnership, it helps us maintain our levels across the municipality. We are sustaining, which is fantastic … If we didn’t have those partnerships, I think we’d be in a world of hurt.”