Emergency Service Administrators: Emergency Services

Emergency Service Administrators:

Emergency services are organizations that ensure public safety by dealing with various urgent situations. Many emergency services agencies exist with some solely dealing with certain types of emergencies while others deal with impromptu emergencies as part of their regular responsibilities. Many of the emergency services agencies usually engage in creating public awareness, prevention programs as well as helping the community avoid, identify and report emergencies effectively.

The accessibility of emergency services rely heavily on the scene and may in other cases depend on the beneficiary giving payment or holding appropriate insurance or other guarantee for getting the emergency service. Three services commonly acknowledged as being hub to the provision of emergency care to the public and are often government run includes fire and rescue service, police and emergency medical service. These services are normally called for on an out-and-out emergency telephone number, which is reserved for critical emergency calls.

In addition to providing firefighters to address fire and rescue operations, the fire and rescue service may also deal with other emergency service duties from time to time. While the police provide public safety and take action in reducing crime against persons and property, the emergency medical service provide ambulances as well as medical staff to deal with the medical emergencies.

Other emergency services provided by one of the core services or by a private body include military, technical rescue, search and rescue, coastguard, bomb disposal, blood or organ transplant supply, mountain rescue and radio emergency communications amongst others. Additionally, there are groups and organizations that act in response to emergencies while providing safety-related services known as civil emergency services. These civil emergency agencies offer these safety-related services as part of their key mission or as part of their hobbies. The services provided by these groups or organizations include disaster relief, public utilities, famine relief and emergency social services amongst others.

Efficient emergency service management needs agencies from numerous services to work closely together and have open lines of communication. The absence of measures and links to ensure effective management can be rigorously disadvantageous to good working and it is therefore necessary for most agencies to have these procedures and liaisons. In some cases, there can be anxiety between emergency service agencies because of various reasons including professional against voluntary crewmembers or simply based on region or division. Consequently, for effective communications, different services may share familiar practices and procedures for certain large-scale emergencies.

Emergency service administrators are usually faced with administrative, management and leadership issues as well as the changing requirements of emergency services. These administrative issues include personnel administration, financial management, emergency management and program evaluation. In addition to focusing on emergency management, emergency service administrators need to focus on public safety administration also.

The main task of emergency service administrators is to ensure that there is provision of professional public safety services to the public with combined methodology approach. The administrators should also coordinate multi-discipline public safety departments within an emergency agency whose joint mission is to protect, serve and be the guardians of the community. The provision of efficient emergency service is also directly proportional to the dedication and commitment of well-trained public safety personnel who embrace service to others in a considerate, kind and humanistic manner.

Roles and Responsibilities of Emergency Service Administrators:

Administration is the general process of organizing people and resources efficiently in order to channel activities toward familiar goals and objectives. An administrator is the person who is responsible for organizing the personnel, resources as well as supervising the overall performance of an organization. As mentioned earlier, an emergency service administrator is the person who ensures that there is provision of professional public safety services to the public with combined methodology approach. These administrators have the following responsibilities:

Planning:

This is deciding beforehand what to do, how to do it, when to do it and who to do it. Planning is what charts the pathway from where an organization is to where it wants to be. This is one of the major responsibilities of an administrator and it involves establishing goals and organizing them in a reasonable order. Administrators in an organization engage themselves in short-term as well as long-term planning.

In emergency service, this planning involves preparing for disaster before it takes place or disaster response such as emergency evacuation and supporting in addition to reconstructing a society after natural or fabricated disasters have taken place. This is a key administrative phase in emergency service that ensures preparedness of an organization. In this planning stage, emergency administrators develop plans of action to handle and counter emergencies as well as take action to build essential capabilities required to put into practice such plans.

While considering casualty prediction, which is the study of how many injuries or deaths to expect from a certain kind of emergency, the emergency service administrators also develop communication plans with easily clear terminologies and methods. Notably, emergency service administrators should be flexible and all encircling in the planning phase as they carefully distinguish the emergencies and introduction of their respective areas. Because of planning, the emergency service administrators get idea of the resources needed to respond to a particular kind of emergency. Planning also ensures that the personnel in an emergency service agency contribute to the team's goal setting and achievements in addition to ensuring that all departments work in collaboration and contribute in a positive way to the provision of professional and efficient emergency service.

For instance, in the medical emergency service, the administrators provide advice, support other team members, actively participate and support team decisions, identify systems and process shortfalls such as the it system, take actions to improve the system and process underperformance and work to resolve other problems as well ("Emergency Service Administrator" 2009).

Organizing:

This is the second major role of emergency service administrators that generally involves identifying responsibilities to be carried out, classifying the responsibilities into departments or divisions and spelling out organizational relationships. The purpose of organizing, which is also known as coordinating, is to ensure synchronized efforts among all the different departments in the organization. While coordinating all the various elements of an organization, emergency service administrators must consider delegation of authority, responsibility and the duration of control within administrative units.

Organizing or coordination is also a stage in the preparedness aspect of an emergency service agency. Coordination ensures that the preparedness aspect in emergency service is effectively in place. Preparedness is the nonstop cycle of scheduling, organizing, teaching, supplying, applying, evaluating and improving activities to ensure effective coordination. Preparedness is also the development of the capacity to avoid, guard against, react to, recover from and lessen natural disasters, acts of terrorism and other synthetic disasters.

In the medical emergency service, the administrators ensure effective and efficient administration by prioritizing and organizing effective measures of accomplishing urgent tasks, accurately keying in all patient information into the IBA system, managing all emergency departments, maintaining the correct tracking of all patient files and monitoring emergency patient locator.

Staffing:

The other key role of emergency service administrators is staffing which means filling job opportunities with the right people at the right time. Staffing involves identifying staffing needs, writing job descriptions, employing and interviewing people to fill the vacant job positions. In fact, emergency services professions have become exceedingly competitive in recent years. The administrators carry the responsibility of ensuring that an organization is full of professionally trained staff as the demands for personnel to further their education are inherent in most positions ("MS in Emergency Services" n.d.).

The emergency administrators should also provide opportunities for current staff to further their education in order to keep up with the evolving requirements of emergency services. These administrators need to take into account the various special degree programs that are currently offered by different universities with the purposes of meeting the needs of emergency services professionals.

These administrators also carry the responsibility of ensuring that the staffs are equipped with conceptual, managerial and analytical skills that are necessary for designing, trying and applying an effective response to workplace and community emergencies. The emergency service administrators should ensure that the workers are prepared to deal with various emergencies such as the potential loss of human life, loss of property due to fire, natural calamities and terrorist acts among others.

The administrators also carry the responsibility of ensuring that staff is trained in order to develop organizational leadership skills through the study and serious analysis of the emerging order of emergency management. Consequently, this ensures that the emergency service personnel are prepared to take leadership roles in emergency disaster administration. Through the various degree programs, emergency service personnel are equipped with broad knowledge of emergency activities, relationships of the emergency services to each other, the community, and other public or private entities affected by emergency services.

Directing:

Provision of guidance and direction is the responsibility of emergency service administrators in an emergency service agency. Directing or commanding is the leading people of in a way that ensures that the organization achieves its goals and objectives. This aspect of an organization's efficiency involves suitable allocation of resources while providing an effective support system. For administrators to provide proper guidance, they require excellent interpersonal skills and the ability to motivate people. The fundamental issue in directing or commanding is to identify the accurate balance between stressing on staff needs and stressing on the organization's efficiency.

After ensuring that the personnel are equipped to counter the advancing requirements of emergency services, emergency service administrators have the responsibility of making sure that the knowledge acquired is rightly applied in order to deliver efficient services. Emergency service administrators achieve this through providing guidance and direction. For instance, a district emergency coordinator provides direction in the routing and handling of emergency communications by specifically emphasizing on welfare traffic (Tom n.d.).

Controlling:

This role evaluates quality in all areas and identifies the potential or actual digression from the organization's plan. Through this role, administrators ensure high-quality performance and suitable results while maintaining an organized and problem-free environment. Controlling or monitoring includes management of information, performance evaluation and establishment of corrective actions. Controlling helps emergency service administrators to realize mitigation, which is the effort of preventing hazards becoming disasters or reducing the effects of disasters when they occur. This controlling or monitoring process is applied by the administrators after the occurrence of a disaster and can be structural or non-structural.

How to Effectively Lead and Motivate Subordinates:

In order for emergency service agencies to be effective in provision of professional and efficient emergency service, the administrators need to lead, manage, supervise and motivate their subordinates effectively. This can be achieved through

Creating a sense of ownership:

This is the first step towards achieving the goals and objectives of an organization or business enterprise. In every organization, the managers and administrators need to understand that for their subordinates to remain productive, their motivation is vital. One of the best ways to effectively lead and motivate subordinates is to make them feel part of the organization. An organization's ownership should not be left to the top management but should involve the subordinates in decision-making (Asiko 2009). The administrators when coming up with the final decision should consider the contributions of the subordinates.